Meat’s Moral Reckoning: Philosopher John Sanbonmatsu on “The Omnivore’s Deception”

And I was just saying before we started recording that it isn't that often that I read something that really has a lot of new ideas that I haven't considered before about, about what we do to animals and why that's such a huge problem. And there's a lot in here. This might be the best book I've, I've ever read about our relationship with animals.

And I'm not just saying that. John doesn't know this, but I'm not the type who would just say that. Since we had like a terrible tech disaster before we started recording, I'm not that well prepared with the intro, so I'm just gonna read your bio off of your book. John Sanbonmatsu is associate professor of philosophy at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass. He is the editor of Critical Theory and Animal Liberation and author of The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy and the Making of a New Political Subject, but most significantly in my point of view, he is the author of the Omnivore's Deception. Welcome to Our Hen House, John.

[00:01:21] John Sanbonmatsu: Thank you so much for having me. Uh, I'm honored to be here. Just the work that you and Jasmin have been doing year after year, uh, it's really, I, I was looking over the podcasts and it's just amazing the diversity of points of view within the movement you've brought together. So thank you for having me.

[00:01:40] Mariann Sullivan: That's really nice to hear because when we started out, like I remember somebody saying to us like, aren't you gonna run out of people to interview? And we just never do. There are so many different people coming from different directions and different angles who care about animals and philosophy is obviously one of the center points of, of people's interest in animals.

And you know, I try to teach a little philosophy when I teach my law class though, I always say, uh, I like the law stuff, I'm not that good at the philosophy stuff 'cause it's never fully satisfying. And you really have, have covered a lot in this book and more than you would even guess from the title of the book.

I think it gets further into some of the deeper questions of philosophy. And you bring some, as I mentioned, you bring some new ideas there. But I would like to start out with how you start out, your first chapter. It pretty much outlines the current state of the world's animals. I mean, if, if you're a person who's afraid to read stuff about animals because it's bad, just skip the first chapter 'cause it's really bad. It's beyond dire. And I'm not saying it's not accurate. I mean, I think it is accurate. But why, given what you write in your first chapter, why don't you just think it's already too late? Do you still have hope that we can still turn this around in some way or another?

[00:02:58] John Sanbonmatsu: Oh my gosh. You asked me the the hardest question first. Um,

[00:03:03] Mariann Sullivan: No, I much harder ones.

[00:03:06] John Sanbonmatsu: Oh, oh, good. I hope so. No, um, you know, I'm a glass half full guy, so it is not, hope is not like my strongest suit. I, I would say that you and I and others do this work because it, we need to do the work and we need to hold out, uh, some hope that it could be different and will be different.

Antonio Gramsci, you know, the, the Marxist theorist, uh, I've written about, he was quoting someone else. Oh my God, I'm forgetting who he was quoting. But very famously that, um, what the left needs is a pessimism of the intellect and an optimism of the will. So, in other words, we need to have sober analysis and look the truth squarely in the face.

I really believe that. And even hard truths, right? About the state of the movement, about per capita meat consumption increasing. But we can't give up the struggle, and you never know. I mean, history's full, as, you know, history's full of these weird moments when it just breaks open. And things that were unexpected happened, like the Stonewall, uh, rebellion.

No one thought that would eventually lead to gay marriage in the United States yet. Right? Then we have this pushback and who knows if there will be, you know, if that won't be struck down. So it's a constant struggle. And um, yeah, I'm gonna take the fifth whether I personally have hope. I think I'm not... you know, I just, I'm pretending I do if I don't, lemme put it that way.

[00:04:25] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I, I mean, I frequently say that hope is a strategy, by which I don't mean that all you have to do is hope and that will change things. I just mean that hope isn't really a belief I have. It's a strategy to, like, keep me going, to take the next step to, to try to accomplish something. So it's more of an idea than a

[00:04:49] John Sanbonmatsu: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:50] Mariann Sullivan: so I, I think that sort of coordinates with, uh, what you said much more clearly. I think.

[00:04:57] John Sanbonmatsu: You know, and, and I have to say, you know, as I we'll talk about maybe the writing of this book, it took me a very long time to write this book and a lot of grief. But, uh, you know, in the end I did, I did try to end on a hopeful note, you know, um,

[00:05:11] Mariann Sullivan: No, the first chapter is definitely the toughest. I,

[00:05:14] John Sanbonmatsu: Is it? That's so interesting to me that that was, that's the toughest aha.

[00:05:17] Mariann Sullivan: Well, the toughest in that, it kind of laid out what the problem is. And we all know, thinking about what the problem is does.

[00:05:22] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah.

[00:05:23] Mariann Sullivan: But, you know, we have to know what we're talking about. But as I mentioned before, the title, I mean, it's clearly, this is part of the book. A really important part. And I think it sets up the further, deeper part that you go into throughout the book. Um, and it's clearly derived from, you know, the, uh, insanely popular, uh, I used the word insanely advisedly, the popular book by Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma,

[00:05:48] John Sanbonmatsu: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:49] Mariann Sullivan: Probably some people have read it.

Um, I have not, 'cause you know, I don't need to do that to myself. But, so

[00:05:57] John Sanbonmatsu: can

[00:05:57] Mariann Sullivan: you just contrast for us the difference between seeing the question of eating animals as a deception rather than a dilemma as Michael Pollan put it?

[00:06:09] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah. You know, when that book came out in 2006, uh, a friend of mine said. I, I was really upset by it. I, I hadn't read it, but I'd read about it and I knew that this was gonna be the most devastating, uh, te one of the most devastating texts written in my lifetime, in terms of animal advocacy. I just knew it instinctively.

Um, and a friend of mine who's not vegetarian or vegan, uh, but, you know, really smart, nice person. Anyway, um,

[00:06:37] Mariann Sullivan: There's so many of them,

[00:06:38] John Sanbonmatsu: There are so many of them.

[00:06:39] Mariann Sullivan: They're so nice

[00:06:40] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know. I know. What are you gonna do? What are we gonna do? So, uh, you know, she said, oh, I, 'cause I was like, apoplectic about this book already. And she said, oh, oh no, I, I think he's an ally of yours.

I'm like, oh my God. Well, that is exactly the problem that my friend thinks that he's an ally. And the thing is, it was weird. People do put down that book to this day, and they think somehow Pollan is pro animal rights or something. But then again, Temple Grandin has been called an animal rights activist.

[00:07:10] Mariann Sullivan: Right.

[00:07:11] John Sanbonmatsu: So. Yeah, so dilemma versus deception, you know? Um, so just that the arrival of that book, which consolidated a variety of different things going on our, in our culture and became the juggernaut that we, we have today. I mean, it's, it's part of the state mandated curriculum of middle and high schools across the US.

[00:07:34] Mariann Sullivan: I was shocked when I read that I

[00:07:36] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah.

And, and, and the other day, as a, as an author of a new book, I was obsessively looking at my Amazon rankings, and everybody be sure to go and buy it and, and, uh, leave a review. No, um, you know, I, I was looking at like food and policy issues, uh, books on Amazon, and, and the Omnivores Dilemma is still, almost 20 years later, next year is a 20 year anniversary. It's still in the top 10 books, national bestsellers.

Now, can you imagine writing a book and it's a bestseller 20 years, on the top 10, 20 years later? Anyway, um, so the book is not about Pollan per ser, although I do have a couple chapters where I, uh,

[00:08:13] Mariann Sullivan: Right.

[00:08:13] John Sanbonmatsu: I review his arguments.

[00:08:15] Mariann Sullivan: I feel like that it does sort of introduce the whole topic. I mean, looking at that question of why that particular lie became so entrenched and, and what it was about that lie that that appealed to people so much. Do, do you agree? Is that, is that something that resonates?

[00:08:33] John Sanbonmatsu: Oh my God, absolutely. I mean, look, uh, we in the animal movement for decades, people have been talking about factory farming. And I don't talk about, I mean, my book is partly about the rise rise of industrialized a animal agriculture in the US right? And which has brought us to today. But our very success in getting people to be aware of that issue has, has ended up being a weakness or vulnerability as well.

Because, people who hear, like if I show footage of, like Meet Your Meat to my students, you know, the PETA film, it's really upsetting and they get upset. And what they say though is, oh no, that's terrible, they, they should be killed humanely. And, and so by the, you know, eighties, nineties,

early two thousands in particular, the meat industry was, was trying to do damage control. Right? Here you have scientists beginning to really draw a link between animal agriculture, some of them anyway, animal agriculture and climate change. Uh, people getting sick of e coli and salmonella and dying of it, and uh, et cetera, et cetera.

You know, the study showing that veganism was a healthier diet than omnivorism. So, so what's the meat industry gonna do? And not just the meat industry, the whole culture. People want to hold on to their habits, their biases, right? Their power, their privilege. So along comes Pollan and a whole host of others, including, as you know, Barbara Kingsolver, Temple Grandin.

[00:10:00] Mariann Sullivan: I used to like Barbara Kingsolver until she wrote that book.

[00:10:02] John Sanbonmatsu: Well, she's an amazing, she's an amazing writer, feminist, uh, leftist, uh. Yeah, but on, but this book, I'll tell you, you know, it's interesting. I was on a, a radio interview with my friend Robert Jones and the philosopher Troy Jollimoore. They're both, well, Troy's also a poet, but they're both philosophers. And Troy before we talked about my book, he went and went over The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's book, just to remind himself about the book.

'cause he couldn't, he couldn't believe actually, he had read my book and he was like, he couldn't believe of the quotes I was pulling from Pollan's book, which were just, they're just so, there's such sadism and toxic masculinity and contempt for animals. And Troy's remark was, gee, I don't, I don't remember any of that.

And that to me is indicative right, that people, um, could read these books, including Kingsolver's book, and think that somehow, well, they didn't even notice that there was, uh, sadism because the whole culture is, is rooted in violence. You know?

[00:11:03] Mariann Sullivan: They just come away with the idea that something nice is possible. 'cause they, they just ignore even the sadism within the description of the nice little farms.

[00:11:15] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, it's, it's weird and it's in, but

[00:11:17] Mariann Sullivan: what they wanna believe. That's for sure. I.

[00:11:19] John Sanbonmatsu: Yes. Yes. And I think that in a way you had to have that, what we might call desublimated violence. You'd have to have that kind of overt sadism in both of those books. Animal Vegetable Miracle by Kingsolver, which came up the following year, and Pollan's Omnivores Dilemma. They, in a way, they had to include that violence because they didn't want to keep it hidden. They wanted to put it out there so that the reader would feel up, you know, be able to let out a breath. Like, yes, I understand, I understand why, uh, this is part of the cycle of life and why Yeah. I'm a grownup. I don't need you to pull punches. Anyway, so the, and the deception of the title is of course about the meat industry in general, but particularly this discourse around humane meat and then finally the self deception, right?

That's involved in lying to ourselves about our need to continue participating in the system. And, and I mean, you know, for having done this work, uh, and your listeners also, that if you, if you identify yourself as a vegan, uh, you know, the meat eater has like 50 bad arguments already lined up, uh, you know.

Well, asparagus is alive and you eat asparagus or

[00:12:35] Mariann Sullivan: right, right, right.

[00:12:36] John Sanbonmatsu: whatever.

[00:12:37] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. All the nonsense. I, I don't, I actually discourage those kinds of conversations at this point. I've had them long enough. But the thing that particularly goads me about the unrealistic responses, is people read this book or read books like 'em and, um, they know factory farming exists and they somehow continue to think that because this book is in their thought, okay.

And they have to, you know, avoid the sadism or whatever. What happens here is okay, then it's all okay. I, I don't know. They either embrace the idea that we can have small farms and feed everyone with them at a reasonable cause, which is insane if you think about it for two and a half minutes, two and a half seconds.

Or they think that only very rich privileged people should eat animals and they should be ra like, there isn't any way to square their circle. It it's not like they think that, that this is what they're eating even. It's just the fact that somebody writes about it and it exists, uh, makes it all okay. So it extends to the factory farming. It's not just, it doesn't just create an argument that what Joel Salatin does to animals on his, uh, Polyface Farm is okay, which is hard enough to buy. Somehow, people use it as a way to, to tell themselves that it's all okay.

[00:14:00] John Sanbonmatsu: Totally, totally. I mean, you said that so well. It's, it's like, oh my God. Like it, it's, it's, that's exactly right. People can read one of these books. They actually don't even have to, to seek out so-called grass fed. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, uh, they don't even have to walk that walk within, even though it's a stupid idea anyway, you know that I'm gonna get my

[00:14:23] Mariann Sullivan: right.

[00:14:24] John Sanbonmatsu: Leaving that all that aside, simply that their having read it, having felt in their heart of hearts. I think of Jimmy Carter's interview in Playboy, where he described himself as lusting in his heart. I mean, that, you know, that there's this, in my heart of hearts, I would choose this humane kind world of animal agriculture if, you know, if it could be worked out.

Um, but you know, the kids are hungry, so let's stop at McDonald's and, um,

[00:14:53] Mariann Sullivan: I'm rooting for that. Can't do it right now, but that's, yeah, that

[00:14:57] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, no, exactly.

[00:14:59] Mariann Sullivan: know.

[00:14:59] John Sanbonmatsu: So.

[00:15:00] Mariann Sullivan: to understand.

[00:15:01] John Sanbonmatsu: But, but no, but you put your finger on it. It's, it, it's like a, it's like an inoculation against animal ethics, animal rights. And that I, I'll tell you, I had to force my, it was years before I actually screwed up the courage to read these books, either of the Pollan book or the Kingsolver book.

And when I read them

[00:15:16] Mariann Sullivan: God.

[00:15:16] John Sanbonmatsu: And when I read them, I was, I was really surprised Mariann, about how, um, central to both arguments attacking vegetarianism, attacking animal rights was in both works explicitly.

[00:15:31] Mariann Sullivan: Like, can you expand on that a little bit?

[00:15:34] John Sanbonmatsu: Pollan sneers and makes, you know, he, he, he argues that ethical vegetarians and vegans are, he kind of implies they're ridiculous self-deluded creatures because they don't understand the facts of life. They don't understand reality. So the chickens are not enslaved, and the people who think so really don't understand chicken preferences. So there's this whole tone of condescension throughout, and he talks about animal ethics, talks about Peter Singer and so on.

So that's central to the project, is to defend animal agriculture from ethical critique. And, and in Kingsolver's book, likewise. I mean, the, the things she says are so outrageous where she compares you know, the decapitation of animals to cutting the heads off lettuces and then accuses, you know, vegans of hypocrisy when they get upset when the farmer cuts the heads.

[00:16:27] Mariann Sullivan: They almost have to, they almost have to disdain

[00:16:30] John Sanbonmatsu: Yes.

[00:16:30] Mariann Sullivan: us. I mean, there's such an emotional component to it all.

[00:16:35] John Sanbonmatsu: Yes. And you know, you've had people on, on your podcast who've gone into, and you've talked about this too, the psychology of, you know, why is it the people are so angry at vegans and vegetarians and it's a defensive reaction, right? People can't stand to take this issue seriously. And, and vegans and vegetarians, interestingly, are the only social group in the United States against whom ridicule and kind of violent verbal attacks is sanctioned by society.

Like, it's fair game for everybody to attack vegans and vegetarians. You know what I mean? Like, and you see this incessantly in the culture, and in the most unlikely places. You know, whether it's a book or a film or a TV show, everybody's always bashing on vegans and the way that they, they can't do against anyone, any other group in society.

You know what I mean? Whether it's a minority group or... so, so we have our workout cut out for us, should we say that?

[00:17:30] Mariann Sullivan: And you know, that's not, I mean, you start with that topic, but as we said, you go into a lot of other topics, um, and one of the, I mean, and you go boldly where people are frequently afraid to go. And one of things that you discuss at length is the analogy between what we do to animals and slavery, human slavery.

Um, and that's obviously a fraught topic for a lot of people.

[00:17:52] John Sanbonmatsu: Sure.

[00:17:53] Mariann Sullivan: But I think you feel, and I tend to feel that the analogy is crucial. I mean, it is, it is such an obvious analogy and what else are we gonna analogize to? I mean, what else is there? Um, so can you talk a little bit about how you feel, whether it's crucial, and tell us your thoughts on why you chose to go there and what the insights are that you draw from that analogy.

Because you go into it in, in a lot of depth and it's very compelling.

[00:18:19] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah. Well, thanks, thanks for mentioning that. I completely understand why, say Marjorie Spiegel's book, The Dreaded Comparison, which came out, you know, decades ago, raised hackles among people of color, particularly Black, Black women. And I'm not saying it was a bad book, but I'm saying that I understand that, um, given the fact that, uh, people of color and especially Black people have been compared to animals as a way of dehumanizing them.

And you don't want to reiterate tropes even, uh, indirectly that reinforce that.

[00:18:52] Mariann Sullivan: Like, I'm sure the way Marjorie Spiegel saw it and the way other people see it, they're doing exactly the opposite. They're not

[00:18:59] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, yeah,

[00:19:00] Mariann Sullivan: that,

[00:19:01] John Sanbonmatsu: That's right.

[00:19:02] Mariann Sullivan: Black people are like animals. They're saying

[00:19:04] John Sanbonmatsu: It's the opposite. They're doing the opposite

[00:19:05] Mariann Sullivan: oppression is the same or something, but that doesn't, I mean, the, you know, the history of slavery is a fundamental aspect of people's lives and history, and it's very dangerous to mess with it.

[00:19:17] John Sanbonmatsu: It is. I totally agree with that. But I think one of the things that, that I learned in writing this book and researching it and thinking about it is, you know, because of the American experience, we, we tend to forget, right, that slavery existed for thousands of years. It did not arise in Europe, in the early modern period, 16th century, 15th century with, uh, Columbus or whatever, uh, and racialization, racial slavery.

So the first arguments in favor of slavery were, were thousands of years before the concept of race was ever developed in Europe. So. Okay. What does that mean? Why is that important? Well, if you read Aristotle's politics, which I go into briefly, um, Aristotle is defending slavery in that work 2,500 years ago.

And describing, um, the relationship between master and slave as a relationship of friendship and reciprocity. And positioning that alongside other natural hierarchies as the Greek's saw it, namely, um, uh, women are naturally subordinate to men, and so forth. So that's not a racial issue.

Okay. Just isn't. And one of the things I go into, uh, at length in the book is, uh, for a few pages is, um, The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn. So this is a 10th century work of Islamic philosophy in which the, all the animals of the earth come together to prosecute, uh, the human race for enslaving them and torturing them and killing them. Remember this is over a thousand years before quote factory farms. Really important to understand. So to say that the problem's factory farms is misidentifying the problem in my view, because that isn't the problem. The problem is this underlying relation of domination and violence.

But the reason I'm mentioning this case, oh, by, so the, The King of the Jinn or the genies, uh, the, you know, the supernatural beings, the king is, is presiding over this court as representatives of the animals come up one by one. But, uh, the reason I'm mentioning this is that the animals say they call us slaves, and the humans say, yeah, because you are our slaves. So even before racialized slavery, there was already an understanding going back to Aristotle, that these two institutions were linked, that they were fundamentally kind of the same. And in fact, historians and anthropologists believed that human slavery in the ancient world emerged out of domestication in the neolithic period.

Right. That begins, you know, 12,000 years ago. And then I can't remember exactly when human slave first human slavery occurred, but, you know, 7,000, 8,000 years ago? Something like that, maybe. So this is something I, I, I think is really important when I talk about slavery or genocide in my book,

it is not a rhetorical ploy. I'm not doing it to be dramatic or, you know, to get people to understand the gravity of what we're doing exactly. I'm, I'm talking about actual continuities that are historical, ideological, cultural, economic. And those continuities are real. They're not made up, and they have to be looked at because as Charles Patterson in his book, Eternal Treblinka Right, talks about similar or actually identical practices that were inflicted on enslaved humans in the ancient world that developed out of animal domestication.

Like if an enslaved person tries to escape, you hobble them. Well hobbling animals to like cutting their Achilles tendon so they can't escape so that you can continue exploiting them, that preceded human slavery, but then becomes one of the tactics, one of the techniques. And there are many other parallels like that, you know.

[00:23:00] Mariann Sullivan: You know, another analogy that you draw is between what we do to animals and, and war. And of course the connection in both of these activities to masculinity, which is something that, you know, people have written about before, but you move on. And this was definitely the most depressing chapter of all 'cause I haven't really paid attention to this whole trend. I've managed to avoid it. This description of the increasing identification of animal, uh, quote unquote husbandry with feminism.

Can you describe a bit of this trend, a bit of these people? It, it, it was eerie and disturbing and, I just didn't know what to think about what was going on here.

[00:23:42] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah. Uh, there was so many parts of.

[00:23:46] Mariann Sullivan: It's big. All these women have these bestselling books.

[00:23:50] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, so, so as you know, Carol Adams kind of revolutionized the study of gender and, and the meat economy in her 1990 book, the Sexual Politics of Meat, Josephine Donovan, Marty Keel, a lot of, uh, ecofeminists and Esther King, you know, have been talking about the status of animals under patriarchy and, and the similar and interlocking oppressions of women on the one hand, and non-human animals on the other.

This is a whole, you know, you've talked about that here.

[00:24:17] Mariann Sullivan: Quite familiar with that particular aspect of the feminist conection.

[00:24:20] John Sanbonmatsu: Yes, yes, yes. And it's still, and it's like, um, I tried to take care to say it is still the case to this moment, right? That most of the violence against animals on this planet and the most of the violence against humans on this planet is male violence actually, right?

It's men who dominate meat, dairy, and egg industries. I mean, on the boards of directors and the farmers. And it's also men who hunt and fish more than women. All of that's true, and I don't want to trivialize that because it's super important, but I, because other people had already said that, and because I saw this other disturbing thing going on, um, I, I explored it.

And so what that chapter is is called Murder She Wrote, and it's about the phenomenon of...

[00:25:03] Mariann Sullivan: You must've been so excited when you thought of that title.

[00:25:04] John Sanbonmatsu: Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, it, it, originally it had been Lady Macbeth at The Rotisserie, but, which I also liked, but I think Murder She Wrote was better.

[00:25:14] Mariann Sullivan: is really

[00:25:14] John Sanbonmatsu: Uh, thank you. So, um, so back in, I think 2010, the New York Times, uh, journalist, Peggy Ornstein, um, very good writer wrote a, a kind of ironical piece in the New York Times magazine of what she called the Femivore's Dilemma. Okay. So it was a specific reference to Pollan's work and, and, uh, Ornstein talked about this phenomenon of, of women, you know, many of whom were, you know, white middle class or upper middle class women, rich, wealthy class women from wealthy classes, um, giving up their jobs or whatever to, to take up hunting and cattle ranching and do it yourself chicken slaughtering as a form of empowerment.

And what I discovered is that there are dozens and dozens of these memoirs of women who were, you know, had six figure salaries in New York City or San Francisco, whatever. And then they go and they buy a cattle ranch in Virginia, and then they write about their experiences. So these are memoirists, very much in the mold of Barbara Kingsolver's pathbreaking book, Animal Vegetable Miracle in 2007.

The, that unleashed a whole slew of these books. And there are two things that are imp, I think disturbing, uh, and interesting about this phenomenon. First of all, most of the women invoke language of maternalism and natality in, in describing their relations with the animals on their farms or on their ranches, they describe them as their own infants.

You know, they help the sheep give birth, and then they cradle the little infant in their arms, and then like a few pages later, they're chopping off their heads. And, uh, and often, uh, enough in very sadistic passages of the animals being, uh, humiliated or terrorized. And it, that, that's so psychologically warped, it's hard to know where to begin.

[00:27:11] Mariann Sullivan: It was really deeply disturbing and I didn't read the books. I just read your quotes from the books.

[00:27:17] John Sanbonmatsu: Well, I had, I mean, you know, my service is done, right? I mean, I had, I, I, I, I read dozens of these things and that's the second part that's disturbing, which is not just the content of these books, but the fact that they are national bestsellers published by the big publishing houses. And the public demand for these books.

You know, I haven't done the market research, but presumably almost all, all women. I know that is the demographic that they're going for. Um, there, these women wanna read about this stuff as a way, it's like the public reading Pollan's, uh, Omnivore's dilemma. It kind of inoculates you somehow.

I don't know. So, so I tried to, I did my best to provide a theory of the phenomenon, but I have to say it was, uh, it was very disturbing to have to read these things.

[00:28:02] Mariann Sullivan: Humans. It's really,

[00:28:05] John Sanbonmatsu: Can't live with them, can't shoot them. I mean.

[00:28:07] Mariann Sullivan: But you know, so far the things we've talked about to some extent involve the things that people go through to, to forgive themselves. But not everyone really seems to really be looking for forgiveness. They, they, they just eat them. You know, they don't think a whole lot about 'em.

And a lot of these are people who care about animals. They, you know, their companion animals, but even beyond that, wildlife. They're the type of people who might like escort a bee out of the house. Um, and yet they eat animals when they must have at least some inkling that you can survive. Uh, you know, we're all still alive here and, and that, you know, factory farming exists.

I think it's become, that secret is getting harder and harder to hide. So what is it about humans? I mean, and I would say this is even the bulk of the people, like a lot of people are not looking for the excuse they're just... you know how when you first became vegan and you found out about factory farming and you found out what was going on, you just thought, I just have to tell everybody.

I just have to tell everybody, and then you tell everybody and they just keep eating animals. Like, what is that all about? You talk a little bit, I thought this was really interesting, about psychopathy. Obviously these people are not psychopaths, but sort of a selective psychopathy, which I'd never thought of before.

Anyway,

[00:29:28] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah,

[00:29:29] Mariann Sullivan: I'm, I'm condensing your whole book here. Now expand on what I've said.

[00:29:34] John Sanbonmatsu: Well first of all, I wanna, I wanna say especially vis-a-vis that chapter on psychopathy, um, that, you know, in animal advocacy, when we talk about these issues, we're often concerned with public education, exposing people to the facts. Right? But the, the truth is that we have to take into account power and sadism as a very important feature of speciesism and human domination.

There are people who want to hurt and harm our animals, they're not the fringe because if they were the fringe, then bestselling authors like, uh, Kingsolver and Pollan would not write the books they write and have the huge audiences that they have. So that needs to be examined. Simply that.

But as someone, you know, I've been teaching ethics for a quarter century, and I'll tell you that, you know, going back to Aristotle and, and his ethics, it's always been central to the tradition that we should seek to close the gap between our ideals and our behavior. Right. Makes sense. You know, and that moral consistency is a value in itself.

But I'll tell you that in my experience, people are, are inconsistent, contradictory, and they're fine with that.

[00:30:43] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:30:44] John Sanbonmatsu: Like,

because I've been thinking about these issues for a long time and teaching ethics, I take it seriously. And I fought myself for all sorts of little moral infractions.

But I think that, that most people don't. And, and I'll tell you another thing I think, uh, I've come to realize is that, um, people as moral agents simply go along with what the mass of people are doing. And they think that that is morality and that, and by the way, that's, that was an argument that Plato described in, um, The Republic 2,500 years ago. You know, that's in the first books of the Republic. It's the idea that, well, morality is just what everybody, uh, adheres to so they don't get caught, you know, doing something that isn't socially sanctioned. And so to give you another example. Uh, chat, GPT, right? The use of AI in the college classroom is, it's an epidemic because it, the student sees, well, that person's doing it, so I, so it must be okay, so I'm gonna do it. And before you know it, everybody's doing it. And whether it's right or wrong or not, they don't really think that much about. Right?

And so, even when I show, uh, students films of, um, harm to animals in the food industry, and we read a variety of thinkers, Karen Davis and Peter Singer and, and others, um, very few of them become vegan. What's interesting is that almost all of them agree with the animal rights position intellectually, but there's something that keeps them from, you know, going that extra step.

And I think, again, I think it's because they've been given license by society, uh, in the mob mentality of society to just go along with it.

[00:32:20] Mariann Sullivan: I don't think it's even just license. They, they know, I mean, you were referring earlier to the disdain that vegans receive from many people. So it's not just license. There is pressure from society to go along along with it.

[00:32:34] John Sanbonmatsu: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's every disincentive to do the right thing,

[00:32:38] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:32:39] John Sanbonmatsu: uh, in a variety of ways in our society, but this one above all, I mean, society makes it so hard. I mean, you can go to most restaurants and get some vegan option, which you couldn't do, you know, 20, 30 years ago.

But, you know, if you say, well here, join this movement where your parents will and your siblings will make fun of you, and they'll be, uh, telling you that you're not getting enough nutrients for the next 30 years. Um, yeah. Please come join this movement. Like, what, what's the incentive to do it?

Well, you and I know there are plenty of incentives. I mean, there are good, good reasons to do it, but society makes it hard, as you say.

[00:33:15] Mariann Sullivan: Well, what about the, can we go back? 'cause I, I kind of combined those questions, but what about the psychopathy part of it?

[00:33:22] John Sanbonmatsu: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:23] Mariann Sullivan: 'cause that goes a little beyond just going with the flow that, I mean, if you're going to be, and I've never heard of being psychopathic about what, you know, people are either psychopaths or they're not. Either, they either don't have a moral compass at all, but you are positing, and I don't know whether you'd put it in this kind of language that you can be psychopathic in like certain ways.

So it's not just going with the flow, it's actually,

[00:33:49] John Sanbonmatsu: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:50] Mariann Sullivan: it's actually, uh, giving yourself permission somehow to be psychopathic about this particular issue by saying it's okay not have a moral compass in this particular area. Am I putting that right? Because I think it's a really helpful way for me to think about it.

[00:34:08] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah. So, so I should explain that in that chapter, um, which I call Harry Lime Disease. Um, I'm comparing our collective behavior towards animals in, you know, just the routine way we relate to animals in society, which is through mass violence, to this clinical condition psychopathy.

And as you say, I'm, I'm not saying that everybody's literally a psychopath, but if you look at what psychopathy is, it, it's diminished or absent ability to feel empathy, to feel regret, to feel remorse about one's actions. The psychopath feels that he or she or they have a completely open field of action, like that the rules don't apply to them, and whatever they do is just what they want to do. You know?

And, uh, there's just no question that that is how society treats other beings. Otherwise, how could we be killing literally 80 billion land animals every year? And, you know, it's up to 3 trillion marine animals every single year. And not only isn't it considered a problem on the news.

Anyone who raised hackles about it or questions it is demonized and, and treated like an idiot or a threat to civilization. I mean, that's what Barbara Kingsolver basically says that.

[00:35:27] Mariann Sullivan: And I think that like at least, I don't know how long ago, but at least during the years of behaviorism or what, there was like a scientific theory that animals, or the Descartes

[00:35:39] John Sanbonmatsu: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:39] Mariann Sullivan: kind of attitude. They, they had a theory that the animals, you know, didn't feel anything. Nobody believes that anymore.

Everybody knows that animals are like, you know, have emotions and, you know, that's pretty widespread. Alright. Not all the details of all of the modern science, which is just unfolding more and more and more and more about animals. But I don't think most people think that animals aren't experience... they don't even give themselves that excuse. They just somehow, I don't know,

[00:36:09] John Sanbonmatsu: Well, the.

[00:36:10] Mariann Sullivan: They're psychopathic about it. That's the, i, I like that word. Even though I would get in a lot of trouble with a lot of people for using it. But, but that fits. It fits.

[00:36:18] John Sanbonmatsu: Uh, yeah, I mean, it, it kind of does. I mean, I, I remember I was trying to, uh, talk to someone about, uh, why it was bad to boil lobsters alive. And, you know, I didn't, it wasn't a long conversation, but it was like, I, I just talked about how sensitive they are and, um, and this, uh, friend, you know, had this big smile on her face and she said, but they're so delicious.

I mean like that, you

[00:36:45] Mariann Sullivan: Oh my god.

[00:36:46] John Sanbonmatsu: Know, you, you peel that back and there really is a kind of, in that case, it wasn't that she was being sadistic, she just didn't care.

[00:36:54] Mariann Sullivan: Exactly,

[00:36:55] John Sanbonmatsu: And, and that, and that, and that is characteristic of the psychopath. It can, and the psychopath can get a sadistic kind of thrill, uh, from seeing the light go out in someone's eyes.

Like serial killers talk about that, you know, incessantly, you know, they just love to watch that wonderful moment when the person's eyes become dolled over. And you find these same descriptions in these memoirs by women about killing animals. Like some of them are just so disturbing because they clearly, they clearly get off on some level.

Mm-hmm. They get a charge from it. So, I, I do wanna say that, in this chapter, I talk about my killing of insects as a boy. You know, and torture of insects, which I, of course, I feel terrible about now,

[00:37:40] Mariann Sullivan: We all have regrets, John. We

[00:37:42] John Sanbonmatsu: You know? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. But I mean, it gave me insight into what, what sadism is, right?

I felt, uh, it was, it was the exertion of power over these helpless beings, which was the point. It wasn't like these beings were threatening me or harming me in any way. It was precisely that, that I could exert power over them at a time in my life when I didn't feel any power and where I felt victimized or, you know, uh,

[00:38:07] Mariann Sullivan: And you weren't just thinking they were like a berry or something. You knew there was something not like a berry.

[00:38:12] John Sanbonmatsu: Exactly. Exactly. And you know, we often talk about, um, when we're talking about industrialized, industrialized agriculture and so forth, we talk about animals as... well, animals are treated as things, right? Animals are treated as objects, as commodities. That's true to a large extent, but it isn't completely true because there's also a sense in which we recognize that there's, they have a subjectivity because we are dominating them.

And we find, we, we argue that we have a right to dominate them, in the way we don't have a right to dominate berries. Okay?

[00:38:41] Mariann Sullivan: Right.

[00:38:41] John Sanbonmatsu: And, and if you see, you know, footage of, uh, behind the scenes footage of slaughterhouse workers or sheep shearing where there's this enormous brutality and violence and sadism towards the animals, you realize that this is, and this is a key point, right, is that, uh, we are in relation to beings who are themselves relational beings.

And power is a form of relation. You know, that is what, that is what power is.

[00:39:06] Mariann Sullivan: Absolutely.

[00:39:07] John Sanbonmatsu: know, uh, it's, it's uh, what, uh, Max Weber called herrschaft. And, uh, Kate Millett in Sexual Politics in 1970 talks, uses Weber's concept to talk about domination. And that is what we're talking about. Domination is itself a political relation, and we don't think of our relations with animals as political.

Right. And then our discourses tend to be about the ethics. And I, yeah. I'm all for talking about the ethics of our relations with animals. Right. But there's a political dimension of wanting to have that domination.

[00:39:38] Mariann Sullivan: I, well, I think that sort of brings us to the other like unbelievably fraught topic that you brought into this discussion and that's comparing meat eating to antisemitism in this very particular way. I am gonna take a quote here that each has an existential orientation toward the world that ends up being impervious to argument or information. That is really great sentence. And you, you were referring to Sartre here

[00:40:05] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah.

[00:40:06] Mariann Sullivan: he refers to as bad faith, which is not necessarily what we think of in the common usage of that term, but

[00:40:12] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah.

[00:40:13] Mariann Sullivan: a lie in which we are both the deceiver and the deceived. Do I have that right?

[00:40:18] John Sanbonmatsu: Perfect. Perfectly.

[00:40:19] Mariann Sullivan: you expand? Can you expand a bit?

'cause I found this section to be really enlightening and kind of,

[00:40:24] John Sanbonmatsu: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:25] Mariann Sullivan: works into that, into that like that. Well, what we were saying before about- is it sadism? Is it psychopathy? Is it a combination of the two?

[00:40:34] John Sanbonmatsu: Just to, to comment on that last point. I think that these are complex issues. I mean, psychological, the, the, the way the psych personal psychology intersects with these larger, uh, institutions and norms is complex. But we can nonetheless describe it in however imperfectly, right.

Um.

[00:40:51] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, and of course I'm forcing you to really, really like to give us just a tiny tidbit so the book goes into it in much more detail than I'm sure you could write, like, you know, even more and more and more about each of these topics. They're enormous topics.

[00:41:06] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, so, so Sartre of course, a very famous existentialist philosopher and what, what he was trying to get at, what, what he says in his book, Anti-Semite and Jew, which came out, uh, after World War II was antisemitism isn't just a belief. Because I mean, if, Speciesism was just a belief, then I could just say to the person next to me, oh, you know, you're misinformed.

Actually animals are not the stupid inferiors you think, and they do suffer. And then it'd be like, oh, thanks for the information. Now I've cha, now I've changed. But no cause we have these attachments to our values and behaviors and our identities. And those attachments are, you know, the multi, they're hydro headed and they're existential.

So Sartre has this idea of bad faith, as you say, in which we're both the deceiver and the deceived. So it's sort of like in the back of our mind, we know, like when someone says to me, but carrots are alive, you eat carrots. I mean, come on. I mean, that's just so stupid. And, and, you know, it would only take a a second of reflection to realize how stupid that is.

But people throw that out, as a way of escaping their freedom. That is to say Sartre's argument is, as, you know, as, as beings with rationality and freedom that we, we can choose our value structure and, and we can take ownership of those values and the choices that we make. Those choices define us. But then what bad faith is, it's a way of keeping at bay any self-reflection, genuine self-reflection on our choices.

Particularly ones where, which we know deep down are not, not kosher, that they're not morally correct. Um, and I, I'll tell you again, as someone who's taught ethics for a long time, I think that that's one of the, and maybe the, the greatest danger to moral life on this planet is bad faith.

'Cause we can get ourselves out of anything if we, you know what I'm saying? We, we can make excuses for our behavior, and we do, uh, well, you know, it's, it's really late at night. I don't feel like taking out the recycling and it doesn't matter. Now, in that case, that's such a trivial matter. 'Cause actually, it probably doesn't matter if you take out the recycling, but you know what I'm saying?

I, I give the example of someone who's committing adultery, um, or whatever is being unfaithful to their partner and tells themselves, oh, well I don't want to tell this person because it might hurt their feelings. So, ultimately it is just kind of an excuse that the person comes up with to shield themselves from the knowledge of what they're doing.

So, and it's the same anyway, with the meat.

[00:43:34] Mariann Sullivan: It doesn't shield them either. You're right, they're both the deceiver and the deceived, so they kind like, I mean, I shouldn't say you like I've done that sort of thing. I think probably every single person on the planet has like, you sort of know you're making up this excuse because you don't wanna do it or whatever it

[00:43:51] John Sanbonmatsu: Or you do wanna do it.

[00:43:52] Mariann Sullivan: but once you come up with the excuse, then you give yourself permission even though you know it's not real.

I mean, it's such a human

[00:44:01] John Sanbonmatsu: It is it, it is, it is. And, and.

[00:44:04] Mariann Sullivan: It's probably, it probably helps us survive. It's probably very adaptive.

[00:44:09] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, perhaps. And I mean, and, and Sartre is clear, he is not saying that we can ever fully get rid of it, but he is saying that if we want to be, have what he calls an authentic life, but in another context we might call a moral life, right? We, we have to really be honest with ourselves about it. But again, if, if people weren't living in bad faith and then I, then I just don't think they would have the violent reaction that they do have when anyone mentions veganism,

[00:44:35] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:44:36] John Sanbonmatsu: Uh, or animal rights.

Right? They, they,

[00:44:39] Mariann Sullivan: I think it's something that we all think that, you know, they know we're right, like, like in the, they know we're right and they're, they're arguing with themselves a lot of the times, like, it's just hard to know how to get past it.

[00:44:52] John Sanbonmatsu: It is hard to know how to get past it, but we, I. And, you know, you've had many years to reflect on this yourself and have people on your podcast to reflect on it. And, um, and there are different strategies, different tactics that we can take. But I think what's just, what's difficult to, for me to make sense of is like the larger picture.

Like what are we, how are we gonna, uh, create structural change? Like, I might be able to con convince this one person in my life or whatever, my students, to reexamine things. But when you're, when you're talking about a structure that's totally interwoven with global capitalism, which is its own problem, uh, and that these systems together are leading to the destruction of, um, life on this planet, it just feels overwhelming.

I mean, I don't,

[00:45:39] Mariann Sullivan: Something that the movement has been struggling with. I mean, not in the same sense. Not everybody is anti-capitalist, but has been struggling with the, the individual advocacy systemic advocacy. And systemic advocacy almost always comes the conclusion of, of, you know, making minor reforms.

'Cause that's all you can do systemically. Like, like what else? You, you're not gonna pass a law to make everybody vegan, you know. If you're gonna pass a law, it's gotta be pretty small. And so I think it's a struggle for everybody, but you do put it in this particular anti-capitalist point of view. And, alright, I, I don't have you here for that much longer. Not sure that we could like, define exact, if you could define exactly what you mean by capitalism, which is something, a word that people use in very different ways

[00:46:23] John Sanbonmatsu: Sure.

[00:46:24] Mariann Sullivan: and, and what it would entail. But if you give us just kind of a glimpse into that.

'Cause I, I've always had this question, do we have to take down capitalism before we can fix anything for animals? 'Cause it's really feels like a big lift.

[00:46:36] John Sanbonmatsu: It is a big lift. Um, no question, but I think the proper objection to my analysis would be that the analysis is incorrect. Right. I mean, again, I'm not saying you're wrong, that it may seem like and may be too big a lift. Um, but I,

[00:46:52] Mariann Sullivan: I agree that doesn't mean you're wrong.

[00:46:53] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, exactly.

Exactly, exactly. Yes. No, for sure, for sure. Um, so what, so capitalism first of all is a historical system that develops in Europe, you know, in the 15th, 16th centuries. So it's not something that humans have always had, right? We've been on the earth for two or 300,000 years as homo sapiens.

Um, this is a pretty recent development, about five centuries. Okay. And, uh, essentially capitalism means, first of all, universal commodity production, which means that goods and, and services are produced not to meet human need, but simply to accumulate profit for those who own everything. Like, so you have 1% or whatever, the population that owns everything.

What do I mean? I mean, they own the factories, they own the land, they own the mines, and they, they own the transport system, and they own the media, and they own the Congress. And so it's really important to, people don't understand this, right? That the animal economy is not there to feed people. I mean, people really think that that's why there's an egg industry.

[00:47:50] Mariann Sullivan: Because they say it every day. We have to feed the world!

[00:47:54] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah. And we know that's not true. I mean, because they, they get rid of surplus product all the time and they dump, you know, the dairy farmers produce too much cows' milk, or the cows produce the milk and then the farmers appropriate it and then they dump the millions of gallons to keep prices artificially low or whatever.

We, we know that this is not about meeting human social need. There's only one reason people have these businesses, and that's to accumulate profit for the shareholders or the direct owners of the company. That's number one. And secondly, capitalism requires universal wage labor.

What does that mean? That means that people can no longer live on the land, scratch out an existence in relations with others in a community as happened, you know, this was the case in Europe for, you know, over a thousand years. They have to sell their labor on a market. And guess what? If you can't sell your labor on the market, then you starve, or your homeless or your relationship goes down the tubes.

So there are enormous existential stakes involved in the being a member of the working class. So, that's it in a nutshell. And so if you're thinking about animal production, all of it is for profit. Like literally all of it is for profit. And that isn't to say that you couldn't have a dysfunctional, catastrophic, uh, system that wasn't capitalist.

We know this from totalitarian communism in the Soviet Union, in China to this day, uh, animals were horribly treated, but that doesn't mean that capitalism treats animals well, because it doesn't. I mean, it, we've turned, capitalism has turned the entire earth into a gulag, a prison house, and a killing field.

Uh, 96, you may know this, but 96% of all mammals on the earth by biomass, excluding humans are in human captivity. Of all the mammals on the earth, 70% of all the birds on the earth, by biomass, in human captivity. Why? How did that happen? It was because of capitalism, and mono monopolization, which is simply part of, uh, capitalist dynamics that you have fewer and fewer companies with greater and greater power. Right? So that the Apple Corporation has, is what is it worth now capitalization of, is it like $2 trillion or something?

[00:50:11] Mariann Sullivan: That I, that is a question I can't answer. I don't know.

But what do we do about this, John? I mean, like, you know, it makes total sense. It's very compelling. We know that the world is incredibly fucked up and under the control of, of whether it is capitalist or communist systems at all.

You know, it's all under the control of,

[00:50:27] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah.

[00:50:28] Mariann Sullivan: of a few people, all of whom are perfectly comfortable with abusing animals. But where does that leave us? Uh, is there anything to do with this information other than to make us give up?

[00:50:40] John Sanbonmatsu: Okay. Fair question. Um, you know, my first book, which was called the Postmodern Prince, was an attempt to, to understand why people who are on the political left have found it difficult to think through these problems of strategy, of leadership, of the next step. Okay, so I don't have a blueprint in that book about like concretely what's to be done.

All I tried to do in that first book was to explore kind of the, the dead ends that, uh, left social theory had found itself in, you know, certainly I or, or someone else, or many others need to write other books and not just write books, but lead movements in a new direction. But the bottom line is we need a social movement with strategy, structure, leadership that can ident... correctly identify the problems facing society, ecologically and socially, and, and create a strategy for, um, for overcoming these systems. Now, do I have other, do I have other ideas about that? Yeah, I do. I think that, for example, in our two party system in the United States, we can't possibly change these structures within that two party system, I can tell you that

[00:51:58] Mariann Sullivan: Well, you'll be happy to hear that Elon Musk wants to start a third one.

[00:52:03] John Sanbonmatsu: Somehow. I doubt. Yeah, yeah. Right. Exactly. Somehow, I don't think that's gonna help us too much. I don't want to be glib about it because I'm up late at night as it were worrying about that question because I, what I see is, I think we're kind of on the Titanic going down and, and the kind of latest, uh, metaphor I'm thinking is like Elon Musk and others are down in the, uh, engine room with these giant drills, drilling into the floor of the Titanic.

You

[00:52:29] Mariann Sullivan: out this, this conversation by saying you were a glass half full kind of person.

[00:52:34] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah.

[00:52:35] Mariann Sullivan: All

[00:52:40] John Sanbonmatsu: know? Yeah.

[00:52:41] Mariann Sullivan: I've led you down a, a, a path here that's a little, because your book kind of ends in a much more, I don't know whether I wanna say hopeful, but positive

[00:52:51] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah.

[00:52:52] Mariann Sullivan: positive ways of thinking. And I don't wanna leave people not understanding that. Because you talk a lot about why utilitarianism... i'm gonna cover a lot of ground here and you won't be able to go into it all, but I wanna give people a taste- why utilitarianism doesn't, can't go far enough. It define the right relationship with animals. Why death matters for animals, just like it does to us. And really beautiful disposition on the, uh, Martin Buber and the I thou relationship and having that with animals.

And all of this was stuff that I've heard about in my life, but haven't really related to animals and, and ultimately coming down to the golden rule, which is, I think is a beautiful way of you know, like kind of coming to this simple conclusion after all of this. Can you just talk a little bit about, I, I know that, you know, you talk about all of this at length, but a little bit about these more positive ways of thinking about, about our relationship with animals?

'Cause they really were... they opened some doors for me.

[00:53:59] John Sanbonmatsu: Uh, thank you. I'm, I'm really glad that you had that experience. You know that when, when we talk about these issues to the lay public, uh. What you often hear, and certainly this is what we find with pundits, like, uh, and writers like Michael Pollan or whatever, that they tell us it's too complex an issue.

Oh, if only it was so as simple as the vegans say, they're, they're guilty of black and white thinking, you know, and then they go on to propose regenerative animal agriculture or some other dead end as though that was the solution and,

[00:54:31] Mariann Sullivan: It's immeasurably more complicated than not eating them.

[00:54:33] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, exactly. And, um, so, you know, as I say in my first chapter, and I, I really believe this again, and I could be wrong.

I mean, I'm not... I admit, right, I'm fallible like anyone else, but honestly, having studied this for like 40 years, I, I think of it as the simplest thing in the world. There were two choices. There's a choice between two paths. That's it. Not three pass, 10, pass a million complex.... two. One. You know, we continue, uh, to view and treat other animals as things and degraded inferiors and tools and slaves.

Okay? We've done that for 15,000 years. Okay? Another approach is to view them with genuine respect and love and compassion and curiosity and interest and non-violence. We have not tried that, and it's clear where that would lead, that would lead to a great deal less suffering on the earth, less ecological harm, and so on.

So, uh, as you say, I talk about Martin Buber's I and Thou and what, what's so beautiful about that book, which, which came out, you know, a century ago, is that it lays out a kind of spiritual approach to living a human life that is grounded in absolute respect for the other living being. Like to, rather than, um, even like if I see a tree, even just wanting to categorize it, oh, well, that's a, that's a fir tree, and to, uh, describe it scientifically. That all has its place. Okay. But there's also some other being that I can attend to without seeking to exhaust its possible meanings for me. And Buber talks about his cat, his relationship with his cat. Now, I don't think Buber actually went far enough in his philosophy, but it's, I think it's a beautiful idea that, when we encounter a non-human animal, we develop a relation.

And as you know, this epiphany came to Buber for the, one of the most important insights in Jewish philosophy in the 20th century, when he was a boy and he was brushing his, uh, grandfather's horse in a stall, and the horse looked at him and the two beings locked eyes and encountered one another. You could say, as souls, as minds, whatever.

And Buber describes that as a kind of holy or or divine moment. And I, I really think that people have it in them. I think that humans have that possibility of spiritual growth and empathy within them, but we, we are acculturated to suppress it and distort it. And now with the right wing fascist backlash and with, and all the misogyny, it's incredibly violent misogyny that is just sweeping the earth, we're getting further and further from that.

But the hope lies in, in a movement that valorizes these uh, approaches of connection and empathy. And by the way, and not in some hippie, like, oh, let's all just get along, but like, in fierce defense, fierce defense of the living earth and the beings of this planet, and a fierce commitment to justice and equality and without apology. You know, like I'm tired of apologizing for being an animal advocate.

I learned that from Karen Davis. Like,

[00:58:09] Mariann Sullivan: Don't you dare.

[00:58:10] John Sanbonmatsu: Yeah, I mean, I'm just not, if people are gonna joke, I won't, uh, won't accept it. Even my friends, oh, well, let's go where, somewhere where John can eat. Ha ha ha. Or John, oh, you don't wanna see what I had you, you don't wanna know what I had for, like, I'm not going to, I'm not gonna be complicit in that anymore.

You know, people have gotta, and that's, and honestly, that's why I wrote this book. I wrote this book not for vegans, although I hope vegans find arguments they can use in it, right? And feel some solace. I wrote this book to say to the general public, um, the educated public, this matters. This is important.

You, you want to trivialize it. You want to kind of compartmentalize it and think, well, I'll maybe someday I'll think about this after the first 500 issues that mattered to me. No, this is the most important issue and it's hiding in plain sight, and you can't get away from it. I'm gonna make you really understand why this matters.

And now, you know, I don't know who's gonna read the book, but that's the idea, is that people will read it and they'll... you know, it's like we're talking about with bad faith. People want to squirm off. They want to find some little excuse. And what I tried to do in the book is slam those doors so they can't turn to some new rationale for continuing with the system.

[00:59:27] Mariann Sullivan: I, I mean, I think you succeeded. As always, it is all of our job to get people to read this book because it is a really, really important book. Thanks for writing it.

[00:59:36] John Sanbonmatsu: Thank you. Thank you, Mariann. Thank you for reading it and having me on.

[00:59:40] Mariann Sullivan: And thanks for joining us today. Uh, it's really been an enlightening conversation, um, and I strongly encourage people to read it. And, thanks everyone for joining us for this week's interview. And please, if you haven't already, if you're watching this on YouTube, please remember to subscribe to like the episode.

And if you're listening to it on a podcast, please remember to subscribe wherever you listen or on Apple Podcasts. And, join us next week. We'll be back with Rising Anxieties on Monday.