Chloe Coscarelli opening vegan restaurant in New York this summer

Having recently recommended her latest cookbook, I was thrilled to discover that chef Coscarelli is planning to open a casual vegan restaurant in the Village in a few months. I look forward to trying it out when I’m in the city!

Chloe’s Vegan Italian Kitchen

I received this as a Christmas gift, which wasn’t a big surprise since I’d mentioned I wanted it. My new favorite cookbook. Straightforward, cheerful, just right. I want to make almost every recipe in it, and was happy to see that one of my favorite recipes - pizza with butternut squash, apples, spinach, caramelized onions and a garlic-white bean sauce (the sauce has also proved to be a big hit when I’ve made it alone as a dip for potato chips) – is hers. I can’t remember where I found it on the internet, but I hadn’t previously noticed the source.

I often think about the possibilities for a vegan show on Food Network or Bravo or the like. I’m sure someone at the networks must have given the possibility at least a moment’s thought – we’re a growing segment of the population, and therefore a growing market, which is what they care about - but they’re in kind of a fix. The problem, I believe, is that it’s not just another type of cuisine or niche like sandwiches or grilling. It fundamentally calls into question all of the nonvegan shows (like including representatives of atheism in nondenominational events). It could potentially draw people away from carnism and that fact could alienate the animal-products sponsors, who seem to be the majority.

So I’m not holding my breath. But if they did decide to go ahead with a vegan show, Chloe Coscarelli would be a good choice for the host. She’s photogenic, easy to understand, and according to the cookbook already “divides her time between New York City and Los Angeles.”

Afro-Vegan!

I first learned of this new vegan cookbook by Bryant Terry when flipping through the Rachael Ray magazine at the hair salon. I’m very excited about it. I looked at the preview on Amazon, and not only are the recipes surrounded by historical information but each features a song suggestion. So, for example, Creole Spice Blend might be accompanied by “Creole” by the Charlie Hunter Quartet featuring Mos Def (they’re not all this literal :)).

A random list of good vegan things

• A couple of positive articles about veganism in somewhat unexpected places. First, Moby’s “Why I’m Vegan” in Rolling Stone. (In the piece, he tells the touching story of how he originally decided to become a vegetarian - sitting with his cat and thinking that it made sense to extend his love and care for the cat to other animals.* What’s funny about this isn’t that he made the connection, but how difficult it seems for most of us to do.) Second, an article by Tim Cebula in last month’s Cooking Light, “Me: Vegan!”, in which Cebula describes going vegan for a month under the tutelage of Vedge owners Richard Landau and Kate Jacoby. Vedge is easily the best vegan restaurant, and quite possibly the best restaurant, I’ve ever been to - better advisers would be hard to find. The article itself is about as much as you can realistically expect from an issue whose cover entices readers with “12 Ways for Perfect Chicken!” (Cebula’s piece itself begins on a page opposite an Oscar Mayer ad; it notes that “ethical decisions” are behind Landau’s veganism, but that’s the extent of the ethics discussion). Cebula learns about vegan cooking, enjoys his month as a vegan, finds that he didn’t much miss eating animals, and says he’s cut his consumption of meat by about 50%. The piece also contains a few recipes from Landau and recommendations for some high-quality vegan products (including the next item on my list). I’d recommend it to vegan-curious foodies. (I’m torn about even discussing this one, since it presents a non-vegan diet as an acceptable solution, but I figure it can’t hurt for people to be exposed to more positive information about veganism in any case.)

• Vegenaise. If you like mayonnaise and want to move toward veganism, this is one of the easiest products to swap in. It’s like mayonnaise, but better…which is pretty much their slogan, but it’s true.

• Aerosoles. I’m not one to get excited about shoes in general, but I do like comfort and good design. Not all Aerosoles are vegan, but many are – you have to look at the label. I buy most of my shoes at Marshalls, and it’s easy to scan the rows of boxes looking for the silver Aerosoles ones. (Madden Girl – purple boxes - also makes some vegan shoes, but they tend to be a little too junior for me.) For shoe people, I recently read about Mink vegan shoes. The web site doesn’t give prices, and you know what they say: “If you have to ask,…” I googled: I wouldn’t spend that, or anything close, on a pair of shoes even if I could afford to, but they’re very well designed.

• Earth Balance Vegan Aged White Cheddar Puffs. I first learned of these in December when they were reviewed at Sistah Vegan. I didn’t think they’d be available in my area, but my local supermarket carries them. I can gobble them down, so I just buy the occasional bag as an indulgence.

• L’Oréal EverPure Shampoo and Conditioner. I love these. I fear if I describe why I’ll sound like a shampoo ad, but it’s true: my hair is softer, bouncier, and more manageable. Equally important: I’m not allergic.

• Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Mega Chunks. Not only are these vegan but they’re basically hypo-allergenic – gluten free, nut free, soy free,… And they’re non-GMO. Great for baking (I don’t like baking but my friend discovered these and bakes me delicious vegan treats).

• My tofu scramble. It’s very simple. For one serving, I take half a package (so 7 oz.) soft tofu (I use Nasoya) and press it. When it’s sufficiently drained, I crumble it into a bowl and add about three quarters of a tablespoon nooch, several sprinkles of turmeric (which is one of my all-time favorite spices, though it does stain things), a dollop of Vegenaise (see above), and a pinch of salt, and mix it all together. Then I heat a frying pan with some Smart Balance or Earth Balance on medium-high heat, add the tofu mixture, and “scramble” for a few minutes. That’s it. You can add things to the scramble, but I usually just have it with rye toast. Tofu is fun.

* If you’re interested in the care tradition of animal liberation, you’ll find more information in Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, edited by Josephine Donovan and Carol Adams (1996).

I can’t wait to try this cheese.

I came across a link the other day to an article in Food & Wine about “the science and craft behind” Kite Hill’s artisanal vegan cheeses. They’ve been created by a team of culinary and scientific experts which includes biochemist and PLoS cofounder Patrick Brown, as part of his project of “trying to the maximum extent possible to eliminate animal farming on the planet Earth.”

Apparently, they're sold exclusively at Whole Foods, and for the time being only on or near the West coast (and one store in OK), but the site claims that they'll be available at Whole Foods nationwide within months. Can’t wait to try them.

Day of the Dead assortment

First, vegan DOTD cookies (these are from last year, but they’re cute so who cares?):

(Thank you, you-know-who-you-are, for the link. :))

Second, Death in Paradise:



Beautiful scenery, entertaining stories, a recurring character who’s a lizard, and a fun soundtrack – what’s not to like? I’m disappointed to learn, belatedly, that Ben Miller is leaving during the third season. :(

Third…the Dead:

A great new app for finding vegan meals and a dairy-free guide

Introducing the new PlantEaters app, Mariann Sullivan of Our Hen House says: “The most brilliant ideas are the ones that when you hear about them, you immediately think, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?!?’” I did, as it happens, think of it, a couple of months ago, as my family and friends can attest (my name was the Vegan Menu Project, but PlantEaters is nice, too. :)) So obviously I agree that it’s a brilliant idea.

Here’s their press release from earlier this week:

PlantEaters Makes Finding Vegetarian Meals at Any Restaurant Easy

PlantEaters, a new iPhone app, opens up a world of dining opportunities for vegetarians by helping them find meatless meals at any restaurant, regardless of whether or not the restaurant itself is vegetarian or vegan. Users can rate and share meals that they’ve had when dining out.

New York, NY (PRWEB) October 22, 2013 – PlantEaters is a new iPhone app that helps you find vegetarian meals at restaurants all around you, regardless of whether or not the restaurant itself is vegetarian or vegan. This focus on meals, instead of restaurants, opens up a new world of dining opportunities for vegetarians, vegans, or those just looking to enjoy a meatless meal.

Finding a vegetarian meal at a nearby restaurant can often be a challenge. By leveraging the collective dining experiences of the PlantEaters community, vegetarians can dine out without having to settle for the house salad. Whether it’s a night out in a new city, or dinner with some meat-eating friends, PlantEaters can help make sure that vegetarians and vegans have a great dining experience.

Over time, the majority of meals in PlantEaters will come from the community itself adding and rating meals (including photos). To help get the ball rolling, the database has been pre-populated with thousands of meals covering a number of major metropolitan areas, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Founded by the husband and wife team of David and Tracy Hersh, PlantEaters represents a passion project for the couple, who have been vegan for four years. David is a serial entrepreneur with deep experience in product design, having been a founder at pioneering efforts in the social networking, e-commerce and fantasy sports industries.

“In our hometown of New York City, we are fortunate to have a great selection of vegetarian and vegan restaurants. Even here though, the number of those restaurants pales in comparison to the thousands of other restaurants the city has to offer,” says David. “Increasingly, these restaurants are offering more meatless dining options and Tracy and I were struck by the fact that there was no easy way to find those meals. PlantEaters was created to fill that need.”

“Most of our friends aren’t vegetarians and until PlantEaters it has always been a challenge finding a place everyone would enjoy,” says Tracy. “We used to always sacrifice our dining experience because we didn’t want to inconvenience others, but now we can easily find a place that makes everyone happy.”*

One of the criticisms Sullivan had was that since the app also includes vegetarian meals, vegans would have to sort through them to find the vegan options. But David Hersh explained in a response that it’s easy to limit your search to vegan meals only, and they also posted about this on the PlantEaters blog.

Another useful resource comes from Ashley Capps at the Free from Harm blog. She’s put together a useful guide to dairy-free milks, cheeses, and more. For the products I’ve tried, I agree with her assessments and recommendations. I also can’t wait to get the Non-Dairy Formulary and try out the recipes.

* This framing bothers me, I have to admit.

Woodstock

On Wednesday, just about a year since I last visited, I returned to Woodstock, New York.



Last year, the purpose of our day was a tour of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, which was wonderful and exhilarating but left little time for anything else. Fortunately, we did have time for lunch at the Garden Café, which was just as nice this year.

(The warm chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce and soy vanilla ice cream is the perfect October dessert.)

This time we strolled around the town. Halloween decorations were out:

Some pretty leaf stones:

Hippie clothes:

A country library:

Funky antiques (the sign says Open, but it was closed):

This is an inn at a waterfall, both of which were quiet:

A fat cat on the deck of the inn:

(On the other side is an apartment for rent.)

Some dishflowers in an old bathtub:

My favorite shop was Candlestock, “Home of the World’s Largest Drip Candle Sculpture.” I especially loved the exotic travel-themed votives.

On Wednesdays there’s a farmers’ market:

It was good for the soul.

Magritte and the animals

I spent a weekend in New York recently, and had a swell time. Hung out with friends. Enjoyed lovely weather. Had another delicious lunch at Candle Café. (They have frozen entrees now, available at Whole Foods. I tried the tofu and spinach ravioli, and it was quite nice as frozen food goes. They’re pretty pricey, but I would get some more if they were on sale.) Finally got to Moo Shoes and picked up some desperately needed boots. (I’ve been fortunate the weather in the northeast has been unseasonably warm, but I was beginning to feel chilly, and would be starting to look silly, continuing to wear flip flops.) Stayed in the lap of luxury in a suite in a midtown hotel, which I was pained to have to leave after such a short stay.

A highlight was a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. I’d planned to go for the “American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe” show, which was well worth a visit, but was over the moon to learn that the exhibit “Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938” had opened that weekend. Magritte has been one of my favorite artists for pretty much ever, and I enjoyed the exhibit immensely. It was a reasonable size, and the period featured is when he did what I consider his best work. I just love his style – the clarity of design, the sophistication of color, the blend of seriousness and play. And everything is so neat and crisp and contained. (…But then I’m probably the only one who actually liked Monk’s paintings.)

Of course, I took special notice of animal themes. I hadn’t been familiar with many of Magritte’s animal-related paintings before, but there were several on display and I found more later online.*

One featured in the exhibit was Pleasure (1927):

One I found online (and I’m surprised I hadn’t come across it before) is Collective Invention (1935):

Another example is Homesickness (1940):

But my favorite work in the show by far, to which I kept returning, was Hunters at the Edge of Night (1928):

It’s not that I believe Magritte was trying in these works to say something about other animals or humans’ relationships with them – that seems very unlikely - but that his use of animal and animal-related imagery in these poetic juxtapositions can evoke feelings and ideas about them that transcend his original intent. These ideas remain consistent, though, with his interest in subverting ordinary understandings.

*The colors in these are terribly distorted, which is unfortunate.

In vegan food news…

It’s Vegan MoFo, the vegan month of food, so I’m going to gather some food news items that have come my way recently and add a note of my own.

First, two fast food chains are introducing vegan options. Chipotle is going to expand nationally its sofritas, which has been a hit on the West coast. (It’s not actually their first vegan menu item: their burritos with black beans and guacamole are also vegan.) TCBY will be (or already is – I haven’t yet been in to check) offering Silk Chocolate Almond flavor, made with Silk almond milk.

In other restaurant news, eight new vegan restaurants across the US. For those in the New York City area, Gothamist’s nine best vegan dishes in NYC.

Also, “Groundbreaking, Game Changing Vegan Cheese Is Here”! (I haven’t ordered the cook book yet, though I’m quite excited about it, because I think that for many of the cheeses I’ll need a better blender than I have. I can’t remotely afford a Vitamix, but perhaps a Ninja Pro…?)

Finally, ZUCCHINI. For the past few weeks I’ve been perfecting my zucchini risotto. Zucchini was never one of my favorites, but I had a delicious pasta mista (I have to admit, mixing pastas goes against my grain :)) with zucchini in Italy which changed my mind. Of course, I can’t recreate the al fresco dining by the Mediterranean, but I’m thrilled to have discovered another vegetable to love.

Grass-fed butter

The latest manufactured food fad (this one seems especially creepy - I reached the reference to "bio-hacking" and decided that was enough information for me) involves adding butter to your morning coffee:

A mixture of unsalted grass-fed butter with his trademark Bulletproof Upgraded Coffee — a blend of low-toxin beans, which his site claims to be "cleaner" than Starbucks coffee. Grass-fed butter, according to [David Asprey, founder of Bulletproof Coffee], boosts health benefits, "optimizing" your cholesterol levels instead of worsening them. On his website, he claims that starting your day with the Bulletproof-Butter brew will "give you lots of energy and it will give your body healthy fats that it will use to make cell walls and hormones."

Additionally, Asprey praises the "boundless energy" and "focus" you will feel following a cup....

What's struck me about the "reports" on this marketing ploy have been the casual references to "grass-fed butter." Of course, I've heard of "grass-fed beef" and the like, but the fact that "beef" refers to the animals' flesh means some trace of them remains. This is the absent referent gone wild. Cows exploited for their breast milk are erased entirely.

I do think this use of language to make animals invisible, like the language that renders the millions of victims of a government's foreign policy invisible, is less a tool to distract people from the suffering to which they contribute than a means of psychological evasion that they actively embrace. This isn't to say people do so fully consciously, but it's not plausible that they really forget that butter can't be fed. The absent referent is always there in our consciousness, and that's why language that conceals it is appreciated.

Vegan food! Women artists! Fish x-rays! More!

Had a delightful visit to Philadelphia recently. I was surprised at how much we were able to pack into a short stay. A few highlights:

Vedge. This is a place I’d read about in magazines and seen included in lists of top vegan restaurants. It had also been highly recommended by a local, and I was trying to keep my expectations in check so as to avoid disappointment. But there was no need, as the food was every bit as delicious as the rave reviews had led me to believe. The spring pea crêpe was one of the best single plates of food I’ve ever eaten (and I don’t even like peas!). An enjoyable experience in every way – I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. Coincidentally, I saw The Art of the Steal recently



and so wasn’t keen on visiting the Barnes Collection or the big art museum (which would have been crowded and rushed for the amount of time we had anyway). PAFA is less heavily promoted, but it’s a real gem. The building itself is striking, and the collection of American art (including many works by former students and faculty) is a manageable size and well organized. My favorite galleries were the two at the far end, one featuring landscapes – the seascapes were of course the best – and the other dedicated to women artists. Apparently the Academy has been progressive in women’s art education, and I was happy to see such talent on display. I particularly liked the paintings by Susan Macdowell Eakins and Violet Oakley, and especially Eakins’ Girl in a Plaid Shawl (ca. 1880-85), which looks almost like a film still.



I often find the temporary contemporary exhibits at more traditional museums tedious, but I was impressed by Bill Viola’s Ocean Without a Shore.

“X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out.” We also stopped into this exhibit at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. They’re beautiful x-ray photos of ocean animals from the Smithsonian’s Collection of Fishes (a wonderfully and tragically poetic name*). Unfortunately, the exhibit ends today.



I’ll probably post about a few other sites in Philadelphia, including my new favorite fountain – the cat fountain outside Betsy Ross’s house.

* I did worry about the practices of "collection" and x-raying....

Pink Ribbons, Inc., and Wish Me Away: new documentaries

I have two documentaries to share - the first I saw several weeks ago and the other more recently.

Pink Ribbons, Inc. can be watched on Logo’s “What!?” series online. You don’t have to agree with every argument made in the film to take seriously the main themes: the depoliticization of the approach to breast cancer, the hijacking of this effort by corporations and their shaping of the research priorities, and the terrible “survivor” mentality that pervades this culture.

The second is Wish Me Away,

a touching film which tells the story of country singer Chely Wright as she prepares to come out as gay. I have a few observations about this film, aside from recommending it….

First, religion is unsurprisingly a major aspect of the story. Wright is a Christian who recognizes the sources of bigotry against gay people in her religion, but at the same time believes that her strength ultimately resides there. I remember someone a while back talking about Christianity as akin to an abusive relationship, in which people are told that they’re fundamentally awful BUT, amazingly, their god loves them (or they're only wonderful insofar as their god loves them). It’s all false, and the manipulation is detestable.

Second is Wright’s relationship to feminism. She’s right that a gay woman and even a gay activist doesn’t have to be a feminist, and of course not any specific vision of a feminist. This makes for tensions in her struggles with her book editor, and I smile at her “I’m a pop tart!” assertion of her identity. At the same time, she needs to examine the complexities of…poptartism and other conservative ideas in the same way she does homophobia.

Finally, it’s striking how much the quality of her music seems to improve in the course of her embracing her identity and resisting. To be sure, the early songs featured in the film are the pop hits, but still the songs about her experience living and coming out as a gay woman are far superior to her previous work. To me, this music (“you’re only shouting over you” is a great lyric) shows the promise of country, whose militancy and heartbreak have been strangled by bigotry and bosses. If country could reclaim real rebellion, it could be a fruitful and wonderful art form.

Blood TV

Writing in my previous post about The Silence of the Lambs, and, even more, watching CSA: Confederate States of America recently (or finishing it – for some reason I watched it in 15-minute bits over a period of months) reminded me that I’ve been grimly recording the various meat shows I’ve seen appear over the past several months.

A sample of the carnage on which we feed:

“Meat America,” on the History Channel

“Meat Men,” on the Food Network

The “American Hoggers” (A&E) “Get Snorty” game

“United States of Food” (“United States of Bacon,” “United States of Burgers,” “United States of Steak”), on Discovery

The whole celebration reeks of anxious masculinity and ideological propaganda. When future generations look back and judge our culture’s morality, and they will, this is what they’ll see.

Man aisles, kitchen stadiums, and the stupidity of gendered food

I don’t know whether the pathetic practice of gendering food, cooking, and eating appalls me more as a feminist or a vegan. (Fortunately, I don’t have to choose.) I saw an article today – “Man Aisle Pops Up in New York City Market with Beer, Barbecue, and Cereal”* - reminding me not just of past campaigns encouraging an anxious, homophobic masculinity but also of a piece I saw on the Today Show last week that’s been nagging at me since.

The introduction to a short clip with Bobby Flay talking about some basic kitchen tools “for men” – when Bobby Flay is the least annoying element of your segment, you should know you have a problem – managed to work in just about every tired trope about men, cooking, and eating imaginable. The segment opens with the announcement that

“the kitchen is quickly becoming the new man cave.” Manly music and horror film lighting introduce…a knife being sharpened, as Savannah Guthrie breathlessly narrates. “They’re sharpening their tools and preparing for battle.” A knife cutting through animal flesh. “There will be blood.” A lit burner. “There will be fire.” “And of course” – for no reason at all – “bacon.” …“as men everywhere invade the kitchen.” Bloody hatchet. Giant manhand grinds with mortar and pestle.

‘50s film of a woman in the kitchen, accompanied by dainty music. Music changes to something coded as rock as we learn that men are cooking more meals. Cut to Daniel Duane, author of How to Cook like a Man: “There’s something that really appeals to the male mind about the primal nature of cooking.” Duane in kitchen with his daughters: “There was this choice: diapers, knives. That wasn’t a very hard decision for me.” [laughs]

Guthrie recounts that the book “documents his cooking obsession, from duck confit to bone-in prime rib.” He’s shown from below with blow torch. “Duane has his very own blow torch, a meat locker, and a small arsenal of knives.” Duane: “The kitchen’s definitely become my man cave.”

Clip from Iron Chef. Guthrie: some say the trend began with cooking shows, and “tuning in to watch celebrity chefs like Bobby Flay command the kitchen.” “And with more men playing chef at home, cookware retailers are sitting up and taking notice. Because, after all, if there’s anything men simply can’t get enough of, it’s gadgets.” Cookware store dude: “We like to think of ourselves as a hardware store for people who like to cook.”

Man-oriented cooking sites “are catering to men who aren’t afraid to don an apron and dice some shallots, masters of their own personal kitchen stadiums.”

Time for Flay and his manly kitchen gadgets. Guthrie reassures the audience that his apron isn’t too frilly. No reason to worry, as Flay assures everyone that it’s like his cooking uniform. Cooking “really is kind of like a sporting event,” he says, a bit before he pulls a big-man knife from her testosteronically challenged lady hand, informing her that she doesn’t look ready to cut into a steak…

That’s enough for me.

It has everything: violence, death, competition, gadgets, hardware, domination, the “male mind,” alleged primal drives, weapons, war, disparagement of women's food preparation (which doesn’t involve knives or fire, I guess – prepped food is flown in by sweet bluebirds),... Is there a single sexist trope this thing missed?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*Ridiculous: “Called 'The Man Aisle', the space stocks stereotypically male items like beer, cereal, soda, beef jerky, hot sauces, barbecue sauces, condoms, and oh, Chock full o'Nuts Coffee.” (The author, to her credit, closes on a suitably sarcastic note.)

In three days, California will be a better place.

At long last, on July 1st, the state’s ban on foie gras will take effect. Appetite for Justice has the history behind the law, featuring a discussion of the risks and frustrations of working through legislative channels (and an adorable duck photo!).

The chefs who’ve fought this, hosting foie gras parties and the like, have dishonored themselves and their profession.

Mercy For Animals expands TV ad campaign

The ads played on MTV last fall, and will be shown on several other channels this month. (I haven't seen one on TV yet.)

Erich Fromm #3D: Alienation, animals, and atheism

How does all of this relate to animal consumption and veganism? To the scientific-atheist (or, as I prefer to call it, epistemic) movement?

Alienation, animal use, and veganism

It’s difficult to imagine a more alienated relationship between living beings than that between humans and farmed animals. The 50 billion animals slaughtered each year are literally commodities (the commodification of nature can be seen in other realms as well). We discuss them in abstract language, and render their experiences, their suffering, and often their very existence as living beings invisible. They’re viewed as objects to be exploited for human pleasure, as the quotation that opened this subseries, with its reference to the importance of the “total sensory experience” of eating meat, shows.

Despite the superficial insistence on the great sensual joys of consuming animals, the psychic distress caused by this alienated relationship and the moral wrongs it entails reveals itself in a number of ways. Symptomatic are the psychological defense mechanisms Melanie Joy describes

which make it evident that these relationships are problematic and causing deeper psychological strain.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Fromm regarded sentimentality as alienated emotion – there’s a need for emotional relatedness but no relationships in which to give it form. He offers this illustration:

It is like a person crying at the movies when the heroine loses a chance to make $100,000 and people cry and the same people in real life can witness a great tragedy around themselves and around their own lives, and they don’t cry, and don’t feel anything, because they are really unrelated. They are not concerned. They live in that vacuum of abstraction, of alienation from reality of feelings. (PoN KL 793-5)

We see something similar, I think, in the popularity of the many sentimental films featuring humans helping or saving individual animals or animated animals gaining their freedom, of which there seem to have been many recently. The response to these movies indicates that there’s still a widespread longing amongst all but the sickest people for a genuine and loving relatedness to nonhuman animals, but since most relationships most people have with them in actuality are extremely alienated and destructive, and this poisons those few nonalienated relationships they do have, that longing is subverted and what’s left is alienated emotion or sentimentality.

All of this suggests that the fleeting satisfaction of a juicy burger or cheering Drew Barrymore as she rescues whales are simply alienated practices of consumption that, we’re dimly aware, reveal our lack of relatedness to our fellow animals and the rest of the natural world. Beyond the conscious or unconscious psychological effects of this alienation are the opportunities lost for our knowledge of them, and thus of ourselves; for the development of our reasoning and emotional capacities; and for our development through mutually beneficial relationships with them.

Veganism is the minimal starting point for reforming our relationships with the nonhuman world, as it removes the alienated relationship of exploiting and consuming animals, with its poisonous effects on any other relationships with animals such as conservation work or companion care. It’s a necessary foundation for developing a genuine biophilic ethics.

Alienation, faith, and science

I opened this subseries with a quotation about eating meat that I thought captured perfectly the sad alienation of our relationship to farmed animals. Parallel examples in discussions of religion and atheism appear frequently, but, even though the imbalance of not having a faith quote bothered me aesthetically, I didn’t want to spend time searching for a specific one. Fortunately, reading a post at Jason Rosenhouse’s EvolutionBlog I came across a beauty from Robin Hanson. “A few days ago,” he offers, “I asked why not become religious, if it will give you a better life, even if the evidence for religious beliefs is weak?”

He provides the most frequent answer from atheists: that we value truth. It’s not the only answer, since atheists by no means concur that the claims about religion’s supposed benefits are supported by the evidence or accept the premise that the evidence for religious beliefs is merely “weak.” But it’s a perfectly valid and ethical answer. Behind the reference to truth as an abstract value are both a moral and a political argument, and I’ve yet to see a convincing refutation of either. The moral argument explains the duty to believe according to the evidence. Once that case is made (and thus far the response on the part of religious people and accommodationists has been to ignore rather than engage with it), it’s the same as any other ethical argument: we don’t typically place our personal desires above the duty to behave ethically.

The political (also an ethical) argument is also strong: if we value truth so little, we have no defenses against the evidence-challenged truth claims of powerful, self-interested people and organizations – not just religious fundamentalisms but corporations and governments - that mean great harm. Both suggest that to accept beliefs that we suspect or know to be false because they have desirable consequences for us personally, even if we wanted to and were somehow able to do it, would be an affront to our dignity and abdication of our responsibilities as reasoning beings.

So the argument about valuing truth (and, by implication, for rejecting bad epistemic practices) is strong. But, somewhat unlike ethical arguments about harming animals, it has an abstractness about it that seems to concede too much. It stipulates, basically, that human well-being and a key value of atheists might be in conflict, and that in this case atheists value an abstract principle above human happiness or well-being. So when the faithful or accommodationists raise the absurd extreme hypothetical case in which a faith has only benefits (to humans, presumably) and ask “Would you still oppose it? Would you still tell people not to believe?” a response in the affirmative sounds callous, because the question has pitted “abstract” truth against “real” human well-being.

Of course, it isn’t really, because we don’t live in this impossible fantasy world, as the people posing the question well know. (I find this sort of ridiculous rhetorical posturing unethical in such a context, but leaving that aside…) The problem with the perfectly valid ethical-political argument about truth and believing according to the evidence is that it’s too general to move the discussion into the deeper realm of alienation, with its more integrated understanding of ethics and well-being. It’s incomplete in that it doesn’t address the meaning of faith for our real relationships.

A comprehensive argument, and one that shows the impossibility of the hypothetical case, would emphasize that what we value are truths, plural – truths about real entities, including ourselves and other human and nonhuman beings. Capital-T Truth is not, in fact, abstract, but just the set of these individual truths. And science is practiced at the level of these individual truths - at the level of our relationships with real, concrete natural entities.

Seen in these terms, faith as a practice is revealed as, fundamentally, an alienated relationship with the world, or, better yet, a set of alienated relationships. Even if it were true that faith exclusively afforded all of the benefits its proponents claim (including the experience of awe and wonder at “the world”), these would come at the extent of profound losses. In Fromm’s terms, in contrast to science, faith lacks “humility, in which one ha[s] the strength to look at the world objectively,” undistorted by “our own wishes and fears and imagination.” It lacks respect for the independent reality of the beings and things it encounters. It subverts our ability to gain knowledge about ourselves, about other beings, and about our relationships.

Learning to practice faith is an education in how to be alienated from ourselves and the rest of the natural world. This isn’t only unethical but harms our development as reasoning, feeling beings. Science, in contrast to a narcissistic and alienated faith, is an example of a loving and unalienated relationship with the world. By way of the scientific attitude and concrete relationships of understanding with other beings – regardless of whether these are part of institutional science or not – we relate ourselves lovingly and productively to the world.

It might be surprising how different this understanding of scientific practice is from the common view of science and scientists as cold, distant, and uncaring, as opposed to faith, seen as connected and loving. Fromm’s framework, if taken seriously, forces a reversal: science, ideally, is love.

Conclusion

Even superficially, the benefits to our well-being of animal consumption and of faith are certainly arguable. And even if this weren’t the case, they face strong ethical challenges. But even the ethical challenges don’t address the fact that what’s lost, in both cases, is our relationship to the world, our understanding, the fullness of our existence.

Alienation needs to be a central concept today, not just for ethical-political reasons, but for reasons of our own well-being. We need to think seriously in these terms about whether ours are healthy relationships for human beings, for human cultures, to have with the world.

The great part of all this, as Fromm recognized, is that we don’t have to believe what we’ve been told (often by corporations) about our needs and the bases for our well-being and development. We can end our alienated relationships and rebuild or develop new unalienated ones that will nourish not just our mental health but our development as human beings.

Erich Fromm #3B: Alienation, animals, and atheism

In my previous post in the series I began to argue that the framework in which becoming a vegan (or animal rights activist) or atheist (or science activist) are often discussed – one focusing on alleged psychological needs or pleasures as distinct from ethics and our relationships with other living beings – reflects and in turn contributes to our alienation from the world, each other, and ourselves. It’s harmful not just to others, human and animal, but, in a way that when glimpsed superficially might seem ironic, to the very psychological health with which it appears to be most concerned.

If our ethical relationships and our well-being really were as distinct as this vision implies, if we really did potentially have to trade off a good measure of our health and happiness to have ethical relationships with other living beings, the situation would be far more vexing. In fact, the concerns are inseparable: none can be understood apart from the others, and progress in each one grows from progress in the others. The questions “Why become a vegan?” and “Why embrace science and reject faith?” unite these three spheres - psychological well-being, ethics, and our active relationships with the world - as we can appreciate if we look at them through the lens of alienation. The beauty of the concept of alienation is that it’s inherently relational, capturing the dynamic connections between our interactions with and effects on other beings and our individual mental health and development.

Marx on alienation and our “species-life”

Marx developed the idea of alienation in the nineteenth century. He described the various dimensions of alienation under capitalism, including – most relevant for my purposes here - our estrangement from the rest of nature and so from our “species-being”:

It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life, his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.

So in capitalist society, according to Marx, our best relationship to nature, which he views as one of creative expression through manipulating nature to give concrete form to our visions, is subverted.

Also central to the idea of alienation under capitalism is that everything, including ourselves, comes to be seen as a commodity – recognized and valued not for its inherent characteristics but as an abstraction. As Fromm, following Marx, puts it:

[I]ndeed, if you take your own attitude toward things, if you analyze it a little, you will find that you relate yourself to things to a large extent, not as concrete things, but as commodities. (PoN KL 660-661)

The question…is, whether this mode of production, this mode of behaving economically hasn’t had a tremendous influence on all our personalities, and has not transcended by far the shop and the business, and has gone into our whole life, so that the man who owns the flower shop not only doesn’t think of a concrete flower, but of a fifty-cent thing when he makes a balance, but he never thinks of a concrete flower. He might sell cheese tomorrow or atomic energy or shoes the next day. All these things have very little concrete meaning, but they are essentially experienced as things which have this abstract value. (PoN KL 734-739)

These abstractions come to seem more real than the things or beings themselves.

There are several serious problems with Marx’s discussion of alienation, including his emphasis on differences from other animals that supposedly “make us human” and which we should value apparently for this reason; his focus on “Man [of course] the Worker/Builder/Creator” and the resulting view of our “ideal” relationship with the rest of the natural world as one in which nature is merely a means by which we externalize our consciousness – our creative material (“Nature is man’s inorganic body”[!!!]); and his lack of attention to our relationship with the rest of the natural world (and particularly other animals, bizarrely grouped together and then subsumed under “nature”) outside of our role as artists, artisans, and developers of technology. But the general argument that there is a desirable human-nature relationship that is broken under capitalism, and that this causes something to be broken within people in capitalist society, is an important and fruitful one.

Fromm’s understanding of alienation

“[T]here is probably no period in which alienation has reached such a degree as it has reached today in Western society,” Fromm argued (PoN KL 1345-6), and the concept was central to his thinking. He frequently noted, correctly, that alienation was a concept that had received insufficient attention in the thought and movements influenced by Marx (except for anarchism, as he acknowledges, but that’s for another post).

Fromm followed Marx in defining alienation in terms of broken relationships, often using “unrelatedness” as a synonym for alienation (e.g., “What happens to love in this situation of self-alienation, of unrelatedness?” (PoN KL 934). As with Marx’s, his concept of unrelatedness wasn’t solely about loss or distance - it was the nature of the relationships that mattered. Crucially, Fromm recognized that our ethical relationships – with other people especially, with the things we create, and with the natural world - are at the same time relationships with ourselves, and so when these are fractured our psychological and emotional health is compromised. Our emotions and our understanding of ourselves and the world are actively formed in real interactions, and become warped or atrophy when these are broken.

The connection between alienated relationships and mental health

Fromm developed the concept of capitalist alienation in a neglected context - mental health. An argument he made repeatedly is that “If one is concerned with mankind…capitalism…should be criticized [not just for its economic effects but] for what this mode of production and consumption, this mode of social organization, does to man’s soul, to man’s life, to man’s feeling, to man’s concept of himself” (PoN KL 1018-1023).

This is especially true of our engagement with the world outside us. He saw our genuine relatedness to the world as necessary to our capacity for reason and to our emotional well-being, arguing that “All this state of abstraction, of being alienated from the concreteness of one’s own experience, has far-reaching consequences for one’s mental health” (PoN KL 804-810). “Joy, energy, happiness,” he wrote,

all this depends on the degree to which we are related, to which we are concerned, and that is to say, to which we are in touch with the reality of our feelings, with the reality of other people, and not to experience them as abstractions which we can look at like the commodities at the market;…in this process of being related, we experience ourselves as entities, as I who is related to the world.” (PoN KL 812-18)

Again, and as the quotation above suggests, it isn't mere relatedness that is significant. The form of the relation is key. So, for example, domination, objectification, exploitation, and destruction are forms of engagement with other beings, but these are in Fromm's view completely contrary to mental health and human development.

Alienation and depression

This is where Fromm brought the concept of alienation into new territory. He saw alienation as a root cause of depression, which he defined not as overwhelming sadness but as a form of extreme boredom, a state in which it’s difficult or impossible to have real feelings or interests – “nothing but the expression of an unrelatedness to the world and to love” (PoN KL 826-31). While real emotional pain that responds to experience is a part of mental health, Fromm argued, depression is the intolerable condition of not being able to feel any emotions:

In a culture wherein we become alienated from ourselves, from others, in which our own human feelings become abstractions, cease to be concrete, we become awfully bored. We lose energy. Life ceases to be exciting in a true sense. I believe that boredom is one of the great evils that can befall man. There are few things which are as terrifying and unbearable as being bored. (PoN KL 823-6)

For this reason, he believed that mental health rests in large part on “the overcoming of alienation” (PoN KL 1213-1217). But alienation can’t be overcome through a change of attitude alone, because relationships exist only in action. My next post in the series will talk about some unalienated relationships, particularly science.

Erich Fromm #3A: Alienation, animals, and atheism

“Any substitute would have to mimic the total sensory experience elicited by meats.” – Tara Parker-Pope, “The Challenge of Going Vegan,” New York Times, April 16, 2012

“I should like to speak about what seems to me to be the central problem of mental health: self-alienation, that is, the alienation from ourselves, from our own feelings, from people and from nature; or, to put it still differently, the alienation between ourselves and the world inside and outside of ourselves.” – Erich Fromm. PoN, KL 625-7

(I mentioned in my first post in the Fromm series that it would likely jump around some, and this is the first instance. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, and will have a lot more to say about all of the subjects raised in these posts later on.)

Via vegan.com (which I guess has just gone on hiatus), I learned of Tara Parker-Pope’s recent “wellness” article in the New York Times, “The Challenge of Going Vegan.” I agree with Erik Marcus – it’s a hack job and offers no useful practical information. Its few scattered points, moreover, are trite: habits can be hard to break, some people don’t enjoy meat or dairy substitutes, communities can be unsupportive and hostile. News to no one.

It’s not my intent at the moment to get into any discussion about the ease or difficulty of my or anyone else’s transition to veganism. There are many good resources available for people looking to change. What I want to talk about here is the problematic common vision of ourselves and our relationship to the world that articles like Parker-Pope’s promote. (The next posts will offer an alternative.)

Parker-Pope’s piece starts off by mentioning that celebrities like Bill Clinton and Ellen DeGeneres have been “singing the praises of a vegan diet.” We don’t learn why, and the impression the reader is left with is that adopting a “vegan diet” is about nutrition and weight loss primarily if not entirely (this is not the case for DeGeneres, who has spoken publicly about her objection to animal suffering). We want to be healthier, happier, and thinner, the story goes, and this is the current faddish form of consumption thought to satisfy that desire.

There’s only one place to go from such a starting point - you talk about people’s experiences with the change in consumption. Your personal opinions will become apparent in whether you give more weight to the relative ease or difficulty, or benefits or costs, of animal consumption vs. veganism. Parker-Pope’s biases seem pretty clear from the opening of her second paragraph: “As countless aspiring vegans are discovering, the switch from omnivore to herbivore is fraught with physical, social and economic challenges — at least, for those who don’t have a personal chef….”

There are parallels with contemporary discussions of atheism. Religious people frequently want to dwell on the alleged personal psychological benefits of religion and the needs to which it responds. And atheists often accept this framework, focusing on the personal ease or difficulties, joys or pains, benefits or drawbacks, of leaving religion.

As with dietary change, people’s positions on religion and atheism come into relief as they talk about the psychological process of becoming or living as an atheist or skeptic. Do they focus on personal losses or benefits? How do they characterize the religious and nonreligious social experience? Do they view atheism as a mere substitute for religion, possibly necessary but ultimately unfulfilling? Parker-Pope’s suggestion about veganism above could easily be repurposed by some accommodationists: “Any substitute would have to mimic the total experience elicited by religion.” On the other side, many atheists seek to promote atheism and skepticism as liberating, dignified, and personally fulfilling.

I’m concerned here not with the empirical basis for the claims of the different sides but with the consumerist orientation at the heart of many of the arguments. There are significant differences between the phenomena of veganism and atheism, but in both of these cases the issue has misleadingly been presented as a superficial one of alleged personal wants or needs and their satisfaction. The questions of atheism vs. religion and veganism vs. carnism are understood as questions largely of human consumption and pleasure.

To people whose overwhelming concern is the suffering and deaths of animals, even those for whom food and the enjoyment of eating are important and who want to promote veganism as a joyful and healthful way to live, this framing of the issue can seem obscenely shallow and narcissistic.* Similarly, to many atheist activists for whom truth and the harms of epistemic abdication are paramount, the fixation on the alleged comforts and pleasures afforded by faith looks selfish, childish, and beside the point.

Given this, the arguments often come to be about what people should do vs. what (they insist) makes them healthiest and happiest. This, too, contributes to the problem, because it accepts that there’s a basic distinction between ethics on the one hand and health and happiness on the other, and, worse, that that these might be in conflict. It’s even claimed – often unopposed - that trying to convince someone to go vegan or to adopt a scientific attitude is callous in light of their psycho-physical reliance on and enjoyment of animal consumption or faith.

These false premises are a symptom of how alienated we’ve become from nonhuman animals and from the rest of nature, including (necessarily) ourselves. My next posts in the series will discuss this alienation and some of the means by which it might be overcome.

*As James McWilliams points out:

[W]e don’t claim a customary right to experience an endless array of pleasure in other arenas of sensual life. The pleasures of food are often compared to the pleasures of sex. Still, few of us live life under the impression that we can indulge every sexual desire that tickles the imagination just because it creates pleasure. We don’t have TV shows featuring figures such as Anthony Bourdain traveling the world sampling local and exotic sexual indulgences. To the contrary, we structure the quest for sexual pleasure within a framework of reasonable, morally bound regulations. Whether we adhere to these regulations or not isn’t the point–we generally assume that they serve an important societal function. As I see it, the only reason food gets a pass from this form of regulation is that animals cannot provide their consent. Thus our quest for pleasure trumps their right not to be needlessly violated.