I have been a committed vegetarian for over two decades (23 years, from 16-39). For twelve of those years (from 18-30 or so), I was a strict vegan. I’ll tell you why I am no longer a strict vegan, why I continue to purchase strictly vegan, and what my alternative to veganism is.
First of all, we’ll start with some foundations. There are various kinds of diets that aim at consuming few animal products. We’ll go through some of the main ones here, going from least to most extreme.
Civil eaters are those who maintain a diet common to civilized society, which refrains from such things as human flesh and human or uncooked animal blood. At one time, especially within savage but also among barbarian societies, it was acceptable to practice various forms of cannibalism and to eat the flesh of land animals raw or to drink their blood. Civilized people may retain some elements of raw flesh-eating, especially when it comes to seafood (sushi) but also as it relates to steaks eaten rare or medium-rare, though these do tend to still be cooked, even if questionably so. There are some carnists who have taken to an uncivilized diet, preferring to eat raw carcass. And, of course, there are some psychokillers who have maintained a desire to eat human beings, even within civilization. But these are exceptions, and not the rule.
Mafism or pescavarianism is opposition to eating mammals and refaraint from the eating of their flesh. Why mammals in specific? Well, mammals are defined by their mothers, who have mammary glands. The idea behind mafism is that mammals have a capacity for nurturing that gives them an emotional sensitivity that, mafists argue, is not found in reptiles, amphibians, fish, and birds. Thus, to a mafist, eating other animals is acceptable, but the buck stops at mammals and their loving mothers.
Pescatarians are people who don’t eat mammals or birds, or reptiles or amphibians (which are not common American fare anyway, except perhaps in Florida and Louisiana where frog legs are eaten), but are okay with eating fish. The reasoning here is similar to the mafists, but the compassion extends to all creatures that have a complex nervous system, sometimes extending even to fish other than shellfish.
Pescatarians and mafists may be lacto-ovo or not, meaning that they may to consume or refrain from consuming dairy (lacto-) and eggs (-ovo), or they can be one or the other, such as a lacto-pescatarian or an ovo-mafist.
A vegetarian is an individual who does not consume any animal flesh, whether it be from mammals, reptiles, amphibians, or fish. The idea is that animals differ from plants in that they instinctually flee from predation, whereas plants are quite tolerant of being grazed, browsed, picked, and so on, and do not have the drive to escape, and so are likely not as emotionally troubled by being harvested. Usually, vegetarian will refer to someone who eats lacto-ovo, lacto, or ovo, but this is not always the case. A vegetarian may be a complete or lifestyle vegetarian, in which case they refrain from purchasing leather, fur, bone, and other products derived from unwilling animals (some may utilize used leathers, furs, etc.).
A vegan is a vegetarian who not only refrains from eating animal flesh, but also from eating dairy and eggs, as well as any other animal product, such as honey, leather, fur, bone, insect wax products, and etc. For a vegan, the complete lifestyle element is not only compulsory, but fairly absolute. This is what distinguishes them from other vegetarians, such as lacto-ovo vegetarians. A raw vegan is someone who does not eat food that has been cooked, or at least which has not been heated past a certain temperature.
A fruitarian is a vegan who not only abstains from all animal products, but also from those products that plants do not willfully offer. Fruitarians, like vegetarians more generally, differ in their interpretations of this. All of them include ripe fruits, but their attitude towards various nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes may differ, with fruitarians typically desiring to avoid the latter, thus distinguishing them from vegans. However, the evidence for the practicality of a frugivorous human diet appears limited, such that the fruitarian diet, as consisting only of ripe fruits, appears to be primarily idealistic and not very realistic.
A breatharian is a fruitarian who actually abstains even from fruit. This religious belief holds that one can subsist purely upon the air, perhaps including supplemental water, though strict breatharian idealism holds that the moisture in the air should suffice.
There are some grey areas between these groups. For instance, there are so-called honey-vegans, who subscribe to veganism except for the condemnation of honey consumption. And there are various flavors of freegans, people who will consume things outside of their normal diet on the grounds that the nutriment will otherwise go to waste. For instance, a vegetarian freegan may be willing to consume leftover pepperoni pizza from their workplace, if it will otherwise be thrown in the trash. A vegan one may be willing to eat that too, or limit it to cheese pizza. This is found to be acceptable on the grounds that the matter itself is not bad, but that the funding of it is, and that keeping it from going to waste does nothing to fund the original action. Thus, the freegan argues, the industry cannot possibly be propped up from their commensal actions, which are inconsequential.
My diet is technically lacto-ovo vegetarian, because I raise my own chickens and dairy animals (two cows and some sheep), but my buying habits are vegan. What does that make me? Additionally, there is an underlying philosophy that would seem to set me apart from basic lacto-ovo vegetarians as well as vegans. Let’s explore this a little bit. But it’s a lot to unpack because, well, I am a philosopher, and I have thought a lot about the matter.
To start out, I want to say once more that I have been and continue to be a supporter of a vegan diet. So my criticism here is not going to be absolute. That is, it is not a criticism of vegans, but of veganism, the belief that the whole world should be vegan. In this way, my criticism is similar to that of communism. I believe people should be able to live in communes if they want to. The problem is not communes, then, but communism, when people are forced to live together in communes. That causes some real problems. So what ways might veganism cause problems?
I’m not going to lie. I have some sympathy for the fruitarian worldview, which holds that we should only consume that which is offered to us. That is my ideal. Unfortunately, I cannot imagine it being practicable at the moment. Our food systems are so focused on what they are that I would have to hunt and gather my food myself, and I am afraid there is not enough public land even to do that if I wanted to. Still, I think the transcendental goal, even if not just as it extends to plants, should be to only eat what one is offered. Notice I said transcendental, because it is something that must evolve in the long-term, and which is not immediately actionable.
But the reason I bring this up is that I want you to understand that plants are not completely outside of my range of concern as a vegetarian. Some carnies have argued that vegetarians are cruel to plants, and I think there is actually some truth to this. However, by consuming plants directly, rather than cycling them through animals, which results in some loss to the environment, one consumes fewer plants than one would consume by feeding them first to animals. So, on the grounds of harm-reduction, this argument does not hold water.
As with animals, I want to be good to plant life. My worldview is based in the metaphysics of syntropy, which suggests that there is an organizing force, and that this force is dominant wherever there is wellbeing and flourishing of life. On a collective level, this especially pertains to the ecological system as a whole. This ecological system is a complex, symbiotic relationship between the plants, animals, and fungi, wherein each needs the other to thrive. Animals are needed in ecosystems to graze, browse, scrape, trample, defecate, urinate, die, and decompose. There is nothing added in this process as far as material goes. When an animal eats and drinks from the land they are on, they are not taking from or adding to it, but merely giving it form (the animal body) and cycling it around. It is the process of cycling it around, especially, that is of great importance to the ecosystem here, because without cycling around the nutrients there is stagnation which results from surpluses and shortages, and stagnation results in degradation, the overall loss of activity being a loss of the general life of the ecosystem. Thus, when a plant or an animal dies, decomposers play the important role of distributing its body to those who will benefit from its structures, and when a plant or animal is consumed it is scattered likewise in the manure of the responsible creature, a sort of natural redistribution mechanism. Death is ultimately a natural good, because it is what allows for the progression of recombination and new forms to take place in the process of evolution.
When I was young, I was partly inspired into veganism by the vegan permaculture of Graham Burnett. Not only a vegetarian, but inspired into it by punk rock bands like Propagandhi, Graham Burnett’s remodernist punk art, which included line drawings of diverse community members—including punk rockers like me—gardening and leisuring together in Nature, still seems quite idyllic to me, even in my older years. I think his vision is very noble, especially for city- and suburban-dwellers. So it pains me to disagree with him when it comes to the practicality of things, especially when it comes to rural and commercial food production.
There are some appropriate uses of animals. There are some limited occasions where animal foods might be more efficient, in terms of human labor, than plant foods. For instance, a prairie is easily grazed by cattle, which, if done right, even improve the prairie in doing so rather than destroying it, the way that human farming of grains and legumes would. For this reason, the founder of permaculture, Bill Mollison, actually detested grain and legume agriculture, and generally preferred horticultural approaches, especially for small operations, with a focus on perennials and appropriate technology. Controlled grazing by animals can be an effective means of ecological restoration. Chicken or rabbit tractors, for instance, allow the animals to graze in a select area and to scatter their manure around.
There is also something to be said about the welfare of animals in all of this.
It is undoubtedly true that humans have been rapidly displacing animals. If one is not to take a Malthusian approach to all of this, then, veganism comes up against this fact if it desires to preserve animals while not eating them. A vast network of commercial vegan farms capable of supporting present world populations would rely on incredible amounts of synthetic inputs and organic inputs shipped by way of human technology. This is not only bad for the soil, but its being bad for the soil means that human expansion into the wild is accelerated, and so further displacement of animals must occur.
Instead of this, animals can be incorporated into our food production systems not as the primary product, but as support for it. For instance, ungulates can be rotationally-grazed in nut groves or fruit orchards, as in a silvopasture or alleycropping system, and so also help to fertilize naturally, to rub bark off of cankerous trees, prepare grounds for planting, and so on. Some of them can also be milked on a scale appropriate to the number of animals necessary to be a good steward to the land, without commercial interests being dominant. This could especially be true if Georgist and Pigovian duties and subsidies could incentivize such behaviors on a systemic level, so as to avoid the externalities of irresponsible food producers placed onto the land, their animals, or their workers or consumers. Similarly, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other fowl can be pastured and produce eggs for consumption at a scale appropriate to the land. The idea here is that it is the land, not human consumption, that establishes the level of animal use. It is not humans, but the land, that makes the decision. Humans merely interpret it, similar to a manager and an owner. Humans, by this worldview, play a keystone role as niche constructors and stewards to everyone else, and are responsible to God or Nature in the process.
Many vegans love their pets or companion animals. And it is rare that I have heard anyone judged as a poor vegan for feeding their omnivorous and carnivorous animals animal products. There are, however, vegans who, like the author of Obligate Carnivore, Jed Gillen, who had a vegan pet food company (I cannot locate it now), believe that dogs and cats can healthily subsist on a vegan diet. An argument for dogs is that there are some dogs who are fed vegetarian or vegan diets anyway, because they have meat allergies, and that they are omnivores and so, like humans, can synthesize all of the necessary amino acids from plants. Cats, however, cannot synthesize a vital amino acid, taurine, which results in blindness and other ailments. The author argues, nonetheless, that even commercial cat food is fortified by synthetic taurine, and so cats can be fine on that alone. Having been convinced myself of the logic of the book, I tried putting my dog, at the time a chihuahua (quite a leap from my now bullmastiff), on the author’s pet food, but my dog did not seem to do well on it and it was quite expensive, so I decided to stop. For some time, I wanted to make my own vegan pet food for him, but, especially since graduating in size to a bullmastiff, I have since ruled that out as overly expensive. Unfortunately, this means that, like many vegans, I must shamefully purchase commercial dog food. And, to make things worse, my dog tends to reject the healthier brands, so I end up buying Purina Dog Chow. I feel like the parent who raises their kid on McDonalds (hi Mom and Dad), made from Brazillian, Amazonian beef raised on vast, deforested pasturelands.
So, vegans make exceptions. And often those exceptions are just as bad as mine. But what if, instead of animals raised on deforested rainforest pastures by commercial megafarms, and shipped across the equatorial line, or animals that have been raised domestically in factory farms, there was another source for our animal food? Animals who were raised locally, and able to enjoy their lives clearing and fertilizing fields and filling their mouths in the Winter Sun or the Summer shade, can supply meat to our animals while we ourselves abstain except where abstaining might result in senseless waste. Remember, the land sets the limits. And our dogs and cats might need the meat, but humans can mostly do without it. And hey, if civil eating can include rare steaks, whatever this new diet I am declaring is can tolerate some peripheral meat-eaters if they want to take the time to ensure that they are stewarding enough land to feed their carnivorous animals first and without putting too much load on the land. The most important thing is that the land is in charge.
Also, there is an order of concern that should be adhered to.
It seems logical that there be a greater consideration given to the lives of humans than other mammals, of mammals than those of birds, of birds than those of reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, and bacteria. This natural scale, which results in actually-existing diets and tendencies, and so which is observable, provides our first guideline regarding the order our concern should take. But it can only be considered general, because this does not seem to be fully consistent with consciousness. If it were, it would follow that primates should be given more consideration than dolphins and corvids (birds such as crows, ravens, and magpies), but these latter animals exhibit a higher degree of consciousness insofar as they pass tests for self-awareness, such as the mirror test. Even our beloved pets, whom we would not dare eat unless we were in a depraved Asian country, do not pass these tests as consistently as do these creatures. However, many animals—and not just elephants— mourn the dead, including dogs. So we have to be careful in our judgements, and must consider that exceptions are quite prevalent. Nobody should delight in stepping on a frog. We are human beings, and we must use our judgement to further the ends that we value and to avoid doing harm, especially that harm that results from acting without judging at all.
Importantly, one must understand that males, as a matter of natural law, have to earn their place in this world. When I first got chickens, I was horrified by the fact that the number of roosters that would hatch would be too many for the hens to bare. That is, with a 50/50 ratio of roosters to hens, as can be expected from a common hatching, without a reduction in the number of males, the hens will not be able to endure the amount of times they are mounted, particularly if a particular hen is made a favorite of the bunch, as often occurs. This leaves hens with plucked, bare backs, sometimes being bloodied up, and even at times resulting in their deaths. The thing is, out in nature, roosters would play the role of protecting the hens from predators, and, as a result, their numbers would decline. In their natural habitat as jungle fowl in Asia, this decline results in an equilibrium where only a few males exist per bunch of females. Outside of their natural habitat, they require support to maintain their existence, or else they will decline due to being eaten by raccoons, possums, weasels, foxes, bobcats, dogs, coyotes, wolves, eagles, and so on, but this also means that someone has to step in to be the predator. I have had to play this role, I am unhappy to report, though my conscience is cleared by having first seen the backs and carcasses of the hens they have had their ways with. Roosters are fed to my bullmastiff, to supplement his commercial dog food diet. Are not gang-raping roosters a superior source of meat for him than the alternative? Well, similar problems occur if there are too many bucks, rams, bulls, and so on. They hurt each other and the females. This is all owed to the natural male propensity toward agonistic competition over females, protective or guarding behavior, and the preference for certain females, resulting in a male population that engages in contest, that is naturally reduced by predation and otherwise grows too large, and that focuses on a small number of females within the group. This group requires culling as a fact of nature, and is an appropriate, ethical source of food for carnivores and omnivores, especially if the animal is not mistreated in life and gets to enjoy its early years in freedom and is given a chance to shine before being culled. Unlike humans, who demand that beef come from steers and not bulls, animals are not as demanding that their meat be from castrated sources.
Some animals, not as species but as individuals, are more aggressive than others. If animals are going to learn to share space with us, so that we can incorporate them more fully into our living areas, such as in city parks, neighborhoods, and farms, they are going to have to continue through the process of domestication. This entails artificially selecting against aggressive animals in favor of passive or friendly ones, and is a process that has been going on since the domestication of the dog, cats, goats, or sheep, the earliest animals which we have laid a claim to. It has resulted in dogs and cats with good temperaments, less skiddish and more passive sheep and goats, and so on. For many of us who have taken to eating a reduced or eliminated-meat diet, our experiences around these animals was the impetus for our compassion. But we have to remember that these are domesticated animals, largely artificially-selected by human beings, and not natural angels. Thus, when selecting for males to cull, it should be aggressive males that go to the dogs (or, in the case of a dog, to the hogs).
There are three kinds of symbiotic relationships, relationships of prolonged contact between species. These are parasitism, mutualism, and commensalism. Parasitism involves one organism taking from another without giving something back in return. For example, a vampire bat will drink the blood from the ear of a cow, and will not give the cow anything in return. Commensalism is the living on the waste of one organism by another. For instance, the living on the waste of the cow by magic mushrooms, who give nothing back to the cow, but who rely on the cow’s offerings for survival. And mutualism is the reciprocal exchange between organisms, such that when one takes something it also gives something back of relatively equal value (such that the organisms both benefit, as a win/win), such as when a tickbird, like an oxpecker, picks ticks (who are parasites) from off of the cow, who benefits in the process of providing food to the bird. Importantly, this does not require effort on either’s behalf. Symbiosis is a kind of meta-mutualism or panarchy, as symbiotic relationships are considered to generally be mutually-beneficial insofar as they are important to the maintenance of ecosystems, though they may include parasitisms. Even parasites and predators are ultimately beneficial for an ecosystem, because they help to regulate populations, transfer genes horizontally, increase nutrient cycling rates, and other such things. Similar to government, which sustains when human conscientiousness is low, predators and parasites sustain when populations are not self-regulating.
One fascinating example of mutualism in nature is the farming done by ants. Okay, there are actually lots of ways this is done. Some of them, such as those of leafcutter ants, involve the farming of fungi, while others, including those of some garden and field ants, involve the ranching of aphids, who they “milk” for honeydew. Seriously! These are both considered cases of mutualism because both involve the stewardship of ants, often to the point that it becomes an obligate mutualism, a mutualism depended upon for survival, because the ants become necessary for the protection of the fungus and aphids and they become necessary sources of food without which the ants could not survive. In the case of the fungus, some of them are only found in the gardens of the ants, and in the case of the aphids, they are “put out to pasture,” tended to, and then taken back in for the night, protected all along the way by the ants. This is a win/win relationship on both accounts.
The human domestication of farm animals, especially those used for their hair or wool, eggs, dairy, and hides after natural death or necessary culling, does not seem to be entirely different from what has been identified as mutualism within the animal kingdom more widely. While raising animals for the purpose of slaughtering them, mistreating them, and perhaps even forcing them to labor cannot be given this analysis, it seems that hair, wool, eggs, and dairy can be had with minimal sacrifice on the part of the animal or its offspring, much as honeydew is granted by the aphids to the ants, and that, so long as the animal is overall enriched by the relationship, this constitutes a variety of biological mutualism rather than of parasitism. However, this is largely dependent upon the intentions and the care of the human, and the benefit to the animals. The human intention must be benevolent and the benefit to the animals’ wellbeing must be clear.
In a world where animals are being increasingly pushed out, it seems that the benefits of domestication and the incorporation of animals into our societies is an important offering for their future. While such a relationship may not be able to be called co-operative or collaborative mutualism, it nonetheless constitutes a form of co-optive mutualism, because the animals are effectively being co-opted into our societies and given a place therein. In a way, this might be considered a form of societal-level endosymbiosis, the combination of different organisms into a larger entity, such as by way of consumption and absorption by one of them. We are, in effect, swallowing these animals into society’s collective gullet, and are incorporating them into our collective way of life.
When looked at this way, our concern for animals seems quite natural, as animal abuse is an infringement upon our mutualist social contract with the animals. Deforestation of rainforest for pastureland, factory farming, and even private abuse of animals takes our mutualistic arrangement and shapes it into parasitism. And eating these animals beyond necessary to keep down the aggressive males, and before feeding our pets, is clearly a relationship of active predation.
A list of some of our concerns, so far as I can tell, should go something like this:
Use to the Land Proximity Capacity for Mutualism Sex and Level of Aggression Known Level of Consciousness Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, Species
Animals that cannot be supported by and give back to the land in a beneficial symbiosis should not be there. Aggressive animals, especially males in close proximity, should tend to be done away with, but relative to their level of consciousness and the kind of animal that they are, and only at the rate called for by the land. Of course, it will do no good to clear out all tertiary predators, such as cougars, from an area, but it does a lot of good to prevent an aggressive dog from breeding. Similarly, humans themselves show that consciousness does not mean one does not make trouble for human beings. Animals that are known to have self-awareness, mourn their dead, or etc. should be treated with greater sanctity, and those who have a capacity for mutualism should be cherished.
What does this mean for one’s diet? Well, to some extent, it means it is contingent. It also means that it is limited to what is best for the land and for the animals. If your eating animals does not benefit the animals in a symbiotic or meta-mutualistic fashion, it should not be done at all. For most people, especially those living in the city, this will tend to only justify eating vegan or lacto-ovo vegetarian from microlivestock kept in the city. This does encourage some people to have microlivestock, especially in the suburbs, and as a result it gives more animals a place to live their lives, which is a win for those concerned for the lives of animals, so long as they are well-treated. However, most people will do what is simplest, and, in a free society, that will be to purchase grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds grown from grazed silvopasture and alleycropping farms, where the animal products there produced go primarily to the support of non-human omnivores and carnivores on the farm. The consumption of this by the farmer would be limited by what is necessary for the health of the land and what is needed to feed the dogs and cats, ultimately being a means of waste-reduction. Farmers who themselves would prefer not to eat meat, eggs, and dairy could, of course, sell it to those in the city, but the supply of such products would, again, be limited and priced accordingly, and not ruled by commercial demand. As mentioned, Georgist and Pigovian policies, particularly as they relate to the externalities of land (such as overgrazing and other forms of degradation), can be utilized as functional means to incentivize this behavior. If the costs of environmental degradation are imposed onto the producer, production will be limited to the level that does not degrade the land. If benefits of environmental rejuvenation are subsidized, production will be set at the equilibrium that results between rejuvenation and the need for harvests, resulting in net rejuvenation. Thermoeconomically-speaking, this is a major win. It’s also a win for the animals.
This is different from the diets mentioned previously, because all of those had universal rules pertaining to human behavior, whereas this orients the universal rules in nature and suggests that human behavior should instead be contingent upon the rules as they play out in a given situation. The purpose of such a diet is actually to outdo veganism in its promises to the animals, in suggesting that the vegan diet today practically requires external and often artificial farm inputs, does not incorporate animals as fully into our society as it could, and is not as ecologically or thermoeconomically responsible. In this, the motivation is very much the same as exists within veganism, though it is an integral attempt to “transcend and include” it into something more practicable and which can deliver greater flourishing. However, it accepts the insights from freeganism and fruitarianism, and applies this to a justification of vegetarian mutualism with animals, whereby it is understood that well-cared-for animal products are not a violation of the social contract with animals and does not contribute to animal abuse, which is connected to industrial food production. As with freeganism, animal products that will otherwise go to waste are given license for consumption, but as with fruitarianism, it is best if those products are instead given up freely, as might occur with domestic fowl, dairy animals, bees, and their eggs, milk, and honey. While these are not technically fruits, within the context of human-animal mutualism, and especially when occurring between animals who are bonded with and who trust their stewards, they may, like the honeydew of the aphid, be considered to be freely offered, or, at the very least, offered in return for something back. At the same time, it allows for pescatarianism, mafism, and even civil meat consumption, but within limits and on the fringes, and in pace with evolutionary progress.
I think I will call this new diet antapodism, from the Greek antapodosis, meaning “reciprocity,” which was used by Aristotle to refer to a proportional reciprocity, sometimes between a greater and a lesser entity, wherein each gets their “just deserts.” Unfortunately, Aristotle has also warned that those who find themselves in a balanced position will be hated by those on both sides of imbalance, deficiency and excess. Because of this, antapodism is likely to receive scorn from both hardline vegans and civil meat eaters, though it may find some attraction to mafists, pescatarians, lacto-ovo vegetarians, and those vegans who are so serious about animal wellbeing, and who also care enough about the ecosystem at large, to do what is best for them.
Some might suggest that I am advocating for animal exploitation or parasitism in my defense of obligate mutualism between humans and animals. And there is some admitted truth in this, but I will tell you how I justify this, and how it reflects my opinions also about human relations. In this, I will show that my position is not at all speciesist, because of my justification applying universally, across the lines of species, and even to myself in ways I find less than optimal as a subject of the state and a once-exploited worker and still-hindered freeman. I am a very dedicated advocate for the self-determination of the working class, taking to the anarchist mutualist position, which holds that workers should be free from the oppression of the state and the exploitation of capitalism. However, and as per mutualist tradition, I recognize that such a state of affairs must come about through the self-determination of working people, and so must be earned through the power of organized conscience. The freedom of working people, that is, is not something that is to result from the refraint of political authority or economic control, or from their deciding to instead do well instead of ill, but something that must result from working people organizing themselves and, thereby, taking part in conscious evolution, thereby establishing the might to be free. In other words, the ontology of justice, in my view, is not a top-down affair, where justice is declared from the top, but involves the gradual evolutionary struggle to become better and more organized people, from the bottom-up. This is actually a view consistent with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, as well as Herbert Spencer. Pierre Proudhon’s economic mutualism was the inspiration for the study of mutualism in biology by (his namesake?) Pierre-Joseph van Beneden, and Herbert Spencer’s notion of the “survival of the fittest” showed that mutualism and cooperation come out on top of this struggle. So these are views that anticipate and are grounded in foundational biological, ecological, and evolutionary thinking. And importantly, before I applied them to animals I applied them to human beings.
As human beings are destined always to be oppressed by a state and exploited by capitalism, until they collaborate to establish a politically anarchist and an economically mutualist society, so too animals will be under the stewardship and control of human beings, who will, even if biologically mutualist, have the power to oppress and exploit animals. However, as political authority and capitalist economy respond to the pressures of anarchism and mutualism by establishing paternal and maternal control through systems like the welfare and nanny states, so too it is the natural instinct of human beings to combat the inner will of animals with increasing levels of kindness. One traps more flies with honey than with vinegar, my father used to tell me. Thus, we lead animals into confinement by providing attractors such as feed and we create a dependency upon us, trying to make the animal feel as comfortable around us as is possible.
This is not to advocate for abuse of animals, though it is to accept that there is competition in nature and that animals are not capable of self-governing. And, as I am an advocate for, and a member of, the working class, which must evolve if it is to be free and convivial, and cannot otherwise get there, I am an advocate for animals and their evolution toward the heights of humanity. The human races have evolved from entirely different animals, and animals are ultimately in the process of becoming human.
You might disagree with me about this and the other points I have made, but about my motivations and my even-handedness you must not be confused. I apply the same rules to animals that I do to humans, including myself. I am a believer in the destiny of self-determination, but hold that the next best alternative, if that is not yet claimed, is the fate of codependency, in which case the best approach is not to try to force perfection, but to accept harm-reduction.
My view has a harsh realism to it, and recognizes moral dilemmas such as I have addressed regarding the Trolley Problem, but it is benevolent, and is not at all speciesist. Instead, it affirms the same evolutionary potential of all animals, supports their widespread adoption into our societies, and limits the consumption of meat to the natural level of predation. Antapodism is open to the full spectrum of eaters, from civil meat eaters to breatharians, but those who prize meat will have to limit its consumption to what is ethical and raise their animals in a culture that prioritizes biological mutualism and aspires to economic mutualism with animals.