If you’ve never read Melanie Joy’s book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, you have a wonderful experience in front of you. In her examination of what she refers to as “carnism” (which she talked about extensively when she was on our podcast), Dr. Joy brings unprecedented light to the invisible belief system that underlies people’s ability to have such different attitudes, and different behavior, to animals who have so much in common with each other.
Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows
But maybe your bookshelf — or that part of your bookshelf where you keep books that you intend to read but haven’t yet gotten to — is overflowing, like mine is. If so, your lucky day is here, because now you can be introduced to Joy’s mind-blowing work without reading a word, and without traveling to a conference to hear her speak. Her narrated slideshow is now available online!
Joy helps us tackle one of the hardest things that vegans face in their quest to change the world for animals, i.e., once you stop eating them, your consciousness shifts in such a way that it’s just really hard to remember what you were thinking when you used to eat them. (Of course, maybe that’s because you weren’t actually thinking.) To tell the truth, when I really focus on the fact that people eat animals, it kind of freaks me out. I just don’t get it, even though I know I used to do exactly the same thing. And that’s just not a useful starting point for advocacy. By bringing psychological insight to the process that allows people who truly love some animals to eat other animals without finding it at all creepy, Joy helps us all be compassionate and insightful advocates for change.