In tonight's episode of "Världens sämsta inder" (SVT), you learned something about Jainism. You can think vegans are fussy, extreme. But Jains take non-killing a few notches further, after all. Hard core. For example, don't eat anything that has grown underground, such as potatoes or onions, because you can accidentally damage a worm with the shovel.
Being stupid to animals is against the law. In Sweden anyway. It's pretty amazing, when you think about it. (I'm totally in favor of state-sanctioned animal rights. May have a harder time with veganism.)
PS The title is a quote. Teddy bear or Pippi? This article figure it out 🙂 Ds.
Here comes something that may seem like wild speculation. Speaking of how a thought can pull forward like an epidemic, an avalanche, for good or bad, impossible to stop, once it's on a roll.
After the weekend, Kentucky Fried Chicken in the US will start selling fried veggie chicken pieces. Even classic meat temples or brands must nowadays be able to offer vegetarian options (and push a little extra for them in their advertising) in order not to seem completely passé, uninformed, irresponsible, unintelligent, evil.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2022/01/05/kfc-beyond-fried-chicken/9091297002/
Something that reminds how everyone now has to jump on the "vaccine train". Authorities, traders, thinkers, states. And then I still think both trends are fundamentally acceptable, that is, but I recoil at the actual "mass formation" (is that what it's called?).
There are so many levels of skepticism one can have about how the pandemic is being handled by society. Personally, I do not believe in any supranational, non-governmental orchestrated conspiracy, behind the fact that, among other things, the vaccine strategies look the way they do. Of course, there are companies where the managers are sitting and rubbing their hands right now, over increased sales, and virologists who otherwise work in silence, unappreciated, but now get to experience being heroes and in demand.
But surely there is something exaggerated about it all? Everything just "rolls on" and no authority or state dares to be less restrictive than the others.
Is it perhaps more like a perfect storm? Where the fuel is a mix of xenophobia, refugee flows across all borders that in the last decade have been perceived to threaten life as you know it and want it, the zombie concept that is so cherished in pop culture. Coupled with globalization & the internet that makes everything so easy to stage or just be swept away? That all that stuff became fuel?
When I think about it, there must also be an element of "displacement" in the whole thing, how to focus and invest so much to deal with the pandemic. So, there are other things that are at least as important, but where you are more at a loss as to how to cope with it. Something that is more disturbing, something that causes more anxiety.
So then the pandemic, unconsciously of course, has offered an opportunity to avoid a blow... What could the other thing be then? The climate? The world economy? (And among other things as a consequence of both refugee flows, precisely.)
But then, I don't think this is something our leaders are doing on purpose, to shuffle the cards for their constituents. In any case, it is done so that one can maintain a sense of action, determination, of having a goal to work towards.
While I realize that there is a real challenge with covid. But that it feels like there is something "psychological" behind the handling being so resolute, all or nothing. “We know how to do it, follow us!” As a result, there is also a shift towards "the others", those who fail. Those who go on and on about how the emperor is at least sloppily dressed. Not naked, though, that's not my take. (I myself have booked an appointment to receive my third vaccine dose next week.)
Can you raise the value of animals, without at the same time devaluing that of fellow humans? It's a question I've pondered quite a bit. (Myself, I think it seems difficult.) That's where I started.
But I stopped, or at least paused, reading a transcript of an interview with Jeffrey Masson.
Here is the YouTube video itself:
Jeffrey Masson's story is fascinating and absolutely unique. Just listen! He grew up with the "guru" Paul Brunton, who was close friends with his parents. He eventually trained as a psychoanalyst. And more than that. He became a personal friend of Freud's daughter Anna, gained access to material which he thought showed that Sigmund Freud had obscured essential matters. And he published this. (I have a feeling he overreacted.) This was frowned upon and Masson was driven away from the psychoanalytic movement. Instead, he fought for the plight of animals, becoming a prominent vegan.
Has written many books. About all the parts and shifts in one's life. This interview is an exposé on most things.
So, how are these things related?
There seems to have been a gradual humanization at least in our part of the world. Like a "climate change" that has gone gradually. Today, one cannot discipline one's children, one's wife, or even one's dog (or other "subjects", such as employees, students, etc.) without society wanting to intervene. It's magnificent. Attention is paid to the situation of animals in meat and milk production (most recently, it was Crown Bird that was criticised, because animals are allowed to suffer unnecessarily). Can't say anything about this. Mostly good, I think.
But then to where I am suggesting, something that can be problematic... That when you exalt animals, that they "are as valuable as humans", as it is sometimes said, can this then do something to solidarity or feeling for fellow human beings? Well, in some cases I actually think it is. Much like I think about the new spirituality. That it is like a scale. At one end no problem at all. At the other end more complicated. And then all degrees in between.
I don't care about the first one. A development to approve and applaud. But when the solidarity with the animals becomes one-sided and seems to "take away" from the warm feelings you can feel for your fellow species?
I'd like to bring up an old psychiatric term (which frankly seems to be completely unused today, because when I google tests I get next to no hits!), namely "collective querulance". It is about when the commitment to a vulnerable group becomes so passionate and unreasonable that you can feel that it is quite a lot about the person himself. Kind of like right-handedness, but there it's one's own single-minded crusade against the System at stake. How you yourself have become & are treated badly. In collective grievance, instead, you have sort of "adopted" a group you feel the rest of the world ignores, and you fight for them in an unreasonable and self-righteous way. But the psychology is similar. And the solidarity with the animals sometimes has features of this, that is my firm opinion.
I have had to feel it sometimes on my own skin, I think, in certain more pure-minded societies. As the tepid almost-lacto-vegetarian I myself was and am. That you are too easily portrayed as & relegated to the camp that doesn't understand or care at all, those who oppress and treat animals badly.
And it has then been possible to feel that alongside the strong solidarity people show with the animals, there is also a personal struggle against the outside world that is taking place.
Then, Jeffrey Masson, how does he fit into all this then? Yes, in short, it's my feeling that he's pulling in that direction too... (And in the end, he also abandoned the human world and stood in solidarity with the defenseless animals instead.)
But in his case, it was first expressed as a solidarity with victims of sexual abuse. As Masson experienced, or indeed, had been met with distrust by Freud & Co throughout the ages. A lot can be said about this. But it is as if he exaggerated, "took in" too much, "missed the mark", which raises suspicions.
It is usually claimed that it was only when Freud abandoned his "seduction theory" that psychoanalysis as a form of therapy came into existence... But it is this shift that Masson has been critical of. And he has substantiated this with letters he has found that seem to confirm that Sigmund Freud's early female patients were subjected to actual abuse, but that Freud wanted to hide, downplay this? And that psychoanalysts in Masson's environment generally wanted to see all testimonies from clients about abuse as rather fantasies? That may be. (And even that Freud himself experienced early abuse that made him finally abandon his theory).
But that doesn't really change anything. And Masson was too knowledgeable about psychoanalysis not to realize this. Those who have experienced real abuse can be helped by more concrete, empathetic trauma treatment. Which is usually about being supported to dare and have the strength to remember and talk about what you actually experienced. Psychoanalysis is something much more than that. Which in the best case should be able to deal with real trauma as well, not just the fantasy dimension of life.
"We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that's intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.”
Many of the acceptance speeches at the Oscars last Sunday/Monday were about inequality and solidarity with different groups. Phoenix who won for Best Actor gave a "vegan speech".
Phoenix who is said to have gone vegan when he was only a few years old. He grew up in a family during the hippie era. In the first years, the parents were followers of the sect "God's children" led by Moses David, which the magazine Esquire tells about in a article.
"The fast food giant, the luxury restaurant and the grocery store on the corner - all are betting on vego. No one has escaped the green wave sweeping over Stockholm's food supply... From a militant movement with a focus on activism to a lifestyle that many can identify with..."
June 9 is the time for the Vegomässan in Stockholm, for the eleventh year in a row
The phenomenon is interesting. The youth barometer have interviewed 23.000 young people between the ages of 15-20 about their attitude to vegetarianism and concluded that (as SvT Nyheter summarized it on January 23, 2018): "Many young vegetarians eat meat sometimes".
"Food is the clearest identity marker for young people right now. Values associated with being a vegetarian are so central to many young people that they feel they are 'vegetarian' without actually being one, says Lovisa Sterner, lifestyle expert at the Youth Barometer.
The interviewees express great compassion for the animals' situation. “We raise animals.” How we raise and consume these is likened to "concentration camps". Being a vegetarian is seen as something obvious and is even one of the criteria that the interviewees state for the future world empire. Against the background of the many reports about the downsides of animal production that appear in the media, such an attitude is highly understandable. From a psychological perspective, however, it is possible to problematize the most radical animal ethical reasoning. That the animals are "as valuable as humans" can also be understood as an over-identification, the basis of which may be that it is one's own perceived helplessness (Freud, 1927/2008, p. 390) that is projected onto them, and where the price may be that an increased alienation in relation to the outside world. Freud writes:
The hermit turns his back on this world, he wants nothing to do with it. But one can do more, one can want to remake it, to build a new world in place of the present one, a world in which the most intolerable traits have been obliterated and replaced by others... He who, agitated and despairing, embarks on this path to happiness achieves usually nothing; reality is far too strong for him. He becomes a madman, who usually finds no helper when he tries to realize his delusion. It is claimed, however, that we all at some point behave in the same way as the paranoid, who, through a wish construction, corrects a side of reality that he cannot stand, and confronts this delusion in reality (Freud, 1929/2008, p. 418) .
The commitment to the animals probably exists on a scale, from sympathy, compassion and healthy identification, to over-identification. At the very end of this scale is paranoia. The variant that is closest to hand is the one called "collective grievance" (Ottoson, 1983), that is, when the individual "puts a claim on behalf of a minority group against society at large" (p. 214) in a self-righteous and irreconcilable way. Which minority becomes the object of the individual's care is possibly also more or less arbitrary, or can shift, as it is the individual's personal struggle against an uncomprehending outside world that is the primary thing.
The interviewees are not interested in trying to impose their thoughts on others. Instead, they strive to be able to contribute to a more peaceful and more humane world with their ideas and actions. This more restrained attitude is contrasted with how the religious used to try to win followers with crusades and demands for conversion. The interviewees share a belief that people, when they are ripe for this, will want to acquire this knowledge themselves. The new spirituality certainly offers answers to the big questions, but it is not something that can be convinced prematurely. Tolerance for other views is central and people should be free to believe what they want. The ideal way of being is stated with reference to the Golden Rule of Christianity, that is, you should treat others as you wish to be treated. Having a pacifist attitude is natural. Progress and change must not be achieved through agitation or revolution: "It is better to be for peace than against war." However, there may be times when you need to stand up for yourself and act in a more determined way. It can then be about ending a love relationship that is no longer experienced as rewarding or simply demanding a better room in a hotel.
Many times in the interviews, reference is made to love. This is a large and central concept for the interviewees. The group includes both those who live in a couple relationship and those who are single. Most often, however, the word refers to a deep and pure sympathy for people and animals in general, not to affinity with a certain group or communion with a partner. If anything can be said to be the goal of evolution, it is to gain compassion for all living things. The ability to love is built up over many lives and through experiences of various kinds. Several respondents testify about how they can empathize with situations, and feel compassion for people who are experiencing something difficult, although the respondents themselves have evidently not been close to experiencing anything similar in this life. This is seen as a confirmation that the individual has with her such experience material from previous lives she lived.
The interviewees have a respectful relationship with the animals. Animals are seen in some respects as equal to humans. "Man's greatness is not that great," says one respondent. One of the interviewees says that she once consulted an animal communicator to find out why her dog was so anxious. The communicator had then been alone with the dog for a while and was then able to reproduce how the dog perceived life. In the future, all people will eat vegetarian. “So we won't get there until everyone has become a vegetarian too. Because as long as we kill our friends... As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be war", says one respondent: "We raise animals".
In everyday speech it is said that love and hate are close to each other, but the impression from the material is that it is not something that the respondents would agree with. This hints at the particular definition of the word "love" that is covered. The ambition to be able to have sympathy for everything and everyone is certainly commendable, but should probably be problematized from a psychological point of view. Freud (1929/2008) - and then we can assume that the sympathy he had in mind was after all limited to fellow human beings - describes such an ambition as inflation:
The commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself" is the strongest deterrent to human aggression and an excellent example of the cultural superego's unpsychological procedure. The commandment is impossible to fulfill; such a grand inflation of love can only depreciate the value of love, not eliminate the need (Freud, 1929/2008, p. 469).
The topic of vegetarianism and animal rights deserves extra attention. Against the background of the many reports about the downsides of animal production that appear in the media, the opinion of the respondents is understandable. From a psychological perspective, however, it is possible to problematize the most radical animal ethical reasoning. That the animals would be "just as valuable as humans" can also be understood as an over-identification whose basis could be the own perceived helplessness (Freud, 1927/2008, p. 390) which is projected onto the defenseless animals and then perhaps at the cost of a strengthened or increased alienation in relation to the outside world or one's own species.