Let’s take a look at couple of references first.
Here is an excerpt from one of the articles in DXE
site:
"Robert Fogel, the Nobel Prize winning
economist, is famous for exhaustively researching the data on slavery and
finding that, surprisingly, economic factors played almost no role in its
disappearance. To the contrary, slavery was a massive, profitable, and growing
system, right up to its abolition in the 1860s. But if slavery didn’t end via
economics, how did it end? In short, moral and political mobilization."
However, when I tried to look at Robert Fogel's
works, this is what I find in the Wikipedia itself
"In 2000 Fogel published The Fourth Great
Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism in which he argued that America has
been moving cyclically toward greater equality, largely because of the
influence of religion, especially evangelicalism. Building on his work on the
demise of slavery, he proposed that since evangelicalism was largely
responsible for ending the institution he found to be economically profitable,
that religion would continue to fuel America's moral development. Fogel
diagrammed four "Great Awakenings", called (by others) "The
Fogel Paradigm." "Fogel’s paradigm is drawn from what he believes are
cycles of ethical challenges America has undergone provoked by technological
innovations that create moral crises that, in turn, are resolved by evangelical
awakenings."
My interpretation about
Robert Fogel’s reference by DXE
Robert Fogel did highlight that human slavery was
ended in spite of being profitable. And DXE also highlights that initiatives
such as offering alternative products & services (i.e. without human
slavery involved) did not influence lot of social change; DXE says consumer
activism was then and still is waste of time.
My take on
consumer activism: I have a different belief in this regard. In short, let me
just say that I am one among those who believe that all forms of activism is
critical and should go hand in hand to ensure success, and this includes
consumer activism also. I am not saying this because I am the founder and a shareholder
in a vegan restaurant. That is not at all clouding my judgement here.
Instead, DXE calls for rational thought process and
urges us to spend our efforts "in most effective and scientific way to
ensure maximum impact" instead of succumbing to our gut feelings or trying
to fulfill our own personal wish list. And they conclude that creating more
activists and building the activist community is the key to large scale and
rapid transformation.
For a moment, let’s assume that this is indeed the
best and only way to go forward. But then, why ignore the connection that
Robert Fogel discovered i.e. connection with evangelicalism? Why DXE does not
consider evangelicalism or any other religion as the most effective tool to
build activist community? Let’s ponder upon this more. (In any case, it’s not
nice to reference someone’s work in a half-baked form, I feel).
At this point, I would like to make one thing very
clear – the objective of this article is not to criticize DXE. I have respect
towards the courage displayed by numerous DXE members, and their focus towards
scientific thinking. I am just trying to extend that scientific thinking and
trying to see whether veganism can really spread at great speed without
religious connection.
Role of religion in social
transformation
One need not be a great scholar who has studied
world religions in depth, to say that religion is the only thing that has
resulted in mass social transformations (without force) again and again throughout
the history, in all places around the world. Religion is the only thing that
captured and retained people’s interest over several generations. Of course,
today industries and technology are also playing key role in social
transformations (and perhaps single handedly competing with all world religions
at the same time), but religion is much more time tested tool. History has
shown numerous instances around the world where a new religion shook up the
status quo and spread like storm, drastically changing the behaviour of masses.
Even today, new spiritual leaders are able to pull the crowd, often in hundreds
of thousands, and influence several social changes among them.
Not all religions have performed at the same level,
due to various reasons. And worldwide, many people have committed lot of
atrocities also in the name of religion. That said, religions have also helped
stabilize and unify countless wandering-diverse human minds. They have acted as
guiding principles when humans were in doubt or distress (this mattered to rich
and poor alike), and often helped needy people in materialistic way also (this
mattered to poor the most), and overall helped bind everyone together and preserve
the order. In other words, they have
acted as support systems. And this binding principle has helped countless
religious/spiritual belief groups to be able to keep their personal differences
aside and build institutions that matter – hospitals, schools, hostels,
temples, marriage halls, orphanages and many charity activities. Even today,
religious/spiritual institutions/leaders gain vast popularity in a quick
timeframe, transform people's lives, and consistently show the capability to
attract public funds.
Even among vegan community, Loving Hut by Supreme Master Ching Hai has
turned out to be the most successful vegan restaurant chain so far. Recently,
in one of the small towns in India, Jains were able to put
political pressure and ban meat from that village entirely. Cow slaughter is
banned in several states of India due to Hindus. That’s the power of a
religion.
Achievements of vegans staying
away from religions
Today, most vegans stay away from religions and are
either agnostics or even atheists. That’s mainly because none of the world
religions preach principles of veganism to the extent vegans wish they did.
Some references in religious texts are pro-vegan, and I see vegans trying to
use them to influence social change wherever possible, but unfortunately the
same texts often contain contradictory remarks also and frustrate vegan
activists when other people use those arguments to stay non-vegan.
For example, in India Hindus worship cows. Even if
vegans point at the hypocrisy in their treatment, at best Hindus agree that
they need to be treated better. But they don’t easily agree that cow is like
any other animal, has its basic rights, it was not meant for domestication etc.
Here religious scriptures where god Krishna drinking milk etc. become severe bottlenecks
in convincing them about veganism. Similarly, other contemporary world
religions have their own set of bottlenecks when it comes to veganism. Lastly, most of the spiritual leaders around, don’t
whole heartedly endorse veganism, perhaps for the fear of losing many followers.
Hence, most vegans think that it is better to stay
away from religions and they also think that appealing to sensibility of people is the best and only way to spread veganism. After
all, vegans have achieved/witnessed many victories so far without having to
create a new religion or trying to embrace an existing one with reforms (a
vegan offshoot of Jainism perhaps would be quite interesting – ‘vegan jains’ is
an evolving community). Historically speaking, ban of evil Sati system in India did not happen with the help of a new
religion, India didn’t secure freedom from British with the help of religion.
Same way, vegans didn’t need the help of religion to ensure ban of animal
testing on cosmetics in India or ban of Jallikattu. So, one might think why
bother about religion at all.
However, we do need to ponder upon few things:
1. Vegan community has not built a great support system so far. When someone is
in doubt or distress, some online vegan community or some of the fellow vegans
whom we meet in vegan events, some FAQs in some websites, and some vegan
doctors in case of diseases – that’s all vegans have today. Lack of structured support
systems (institutions + leaders) is a big missing piece. There are many systems
in budding stages, but they need help from fellow vegans in terms of
tanu-mana-dhana to accelerate the growth, and vegans have not started coming
together in big numbers to ensure that yet.
2. So far vegans don’t have a single example to
showcase anywhere in the world where the concept has gained popularity among the
common people (of all income levels) in huge numbers, forget about propagating
such belief system to further generations. This is also a big missing piece in
the puzzle.
One might say that veganism is pretty new and this
judgement is too harsh. However, progress of veganism definitely pales in
comparison to the growth that many successful religious or spiritual groups
have achieved (even in modern times). But we can definitely do better if we
join hands, join forces.
Best way forward
Does it mean that vegans also should start and
popularize spiritual groups and human support systems to ensure maximum impact?
I don’t have strong opinion on the former one (nonetheless I would be happy to
see progress in that direction also), but latter one is definitely important to
touch maximum number of hearts and transform them. With or without the help of “religion”,
we should continue to appeal to the sensibility of fellow human beings, and at
the same time we should also focus on building great support systems. I
sincerely hope that vegans come together and accelerate this movement in much
bigger ways in coming days.
Note:
Many vegans might not agree to this and say that this is not about us, this is
about animals. I don’t agree with that. It is about us and them both, wellbeing
of everyone and our entire environment. So, unless our “system” supports the needs
(if not greed) of fellow human beings who are in trouble, it just won’t work.
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