Schizmogenesis and The "Ethics" of Eating and Pooping

 

El Perro, Francesco Goya

This is a several years tardy answer on whether there are ethics as to why my family still occasionally eats meat. I finally finished my response because I value friendship more than I value winning an argument about lunch. But also because I am slow. 

It’s not a question that I think can be properly answered in a few sentences. Interpersonal moralizing and moral grandstanding in general is counterproductive to bonding and friendship. This essay is NOT arguing that animal welfare, industrial farming, or the general over consumption of people in the states, Europe and other post industrial societies don’t matter. They absolutely all do matter, I'm just not addressing this point here.

Instead my answer challenges the framing of a question and all other questions like it.

Why? 

Why do this now, in the midst of what is happening? 

Because I’m trying to ignore the 4th estate which has devolved from watchdog of the government to rabid guard dog for the pedophilic and murderous mafia of wealthy criminals that are intertwined with all governments. 

That we as the masses are only opening our eyes to the reality of our predicament right now doesn’t change the reality that our predicament was always this moment. This military exercise and every other one that is and has been happening nonstop for the past several hundred years forever only illustrates the inevitable outcome of what I’m about to offer. 

I fear I’ve left out the most obvious bit though, which is simply people being cruel to assuage their own guilt. This essay is not meant to be cruel though, on the contrary. I’ve written it with all the reflection and compassion I could develop in the span of the many years it took me to finish it.

So here we are. Just me, the wind and the hope that this message reaches the right ears.

Imagine hominids squatted near a campfire. Children slurping up organ meats, mothers sucking marrow out of bones. A fight erupts between two grown men (can we accept hominids as us?) in the tribe. One wants to eat the tail of the freshly caught hunt. The other, perhaps the elder or else the much younger of the two, is opposed on superstitious grounds. The moon is new. Eating snout or tail brings bad luck. It can’t be done. Except the other says it can.

This argument isn’t settled, but erupts during the next post hunt feast and the next after. There are also disagreements about how many roots one should eat during the autumn harvest (okay fine hominids are likely pre-agrarian), what color berries are best for drying out and how young the clover should be when eaten.

It’s likely that speculative dinner table scenes like these were the beginnings of human schizmogenesis, an anthropological term used to explain the process by which groups differentiate themselves from each other. Beginning as tiffs between the haves and the have-nots, or between the most opinionated amongst them. Over generations these disputes deepened rifts. Over millennia, tastes and survival slowly moved alongside developing superstitions, beliefs, and morals. These identity markers were reinforced by schizmogenesis, and as survival became less of an urgent concern, they took center stage.

And so we’ve arrived many thousands of cultures later. Cultures that can thank schizmogenesis for developing. Indeed culture is a natural byproduct of it. Modern day life-stylists duke out their daily menus in online anti social forums, both seemingly oblivious to the effect of their tech use and entire existence on local species and domestic food supplies.

Years ago, a friend shared a Reddit post from NoStupidQuestions that asked “Is there any morally good response to why you eat meat?” A meat eater had posed the question, believing it deserved an answer and undoubtedly wanting to prove some vegan, the one who’d likely initially asked, wrong. The question was framed as The Ethics of Eating Meat, despite ethics and morality being distinct categories, if Venn diagrammed.

If we want to talk about either the ethics or morals of one’s eating habits, we can’t leave out discussions about the ethics and morals of one’s defecating habits too. I'll address this in nuggets, logs or if you prefer splats, throughout. 

Humans are biologically considered (by biologists, paleontologists, and most medical professionals) to be generalist, opportunistic feeders capable of thriving on varied diets. This is supported by dentition (YouTube influencers aside), our digestive system, nutritional requirements and evolutionary history.

While there are a couple handfuls of vegan traditional eating habits in highly religious, monastic settings, it would be a hard sell to opine that even ascetic traditions proscribe their ways of life to the commoner. Most traditional diets tend to be based on whatever foods are most readily available to the local population in question. This includes blue zones, where longevity depends on the big picture, mobility, attitudes about work, play and life, not just their varied and highly local ingredients lists that popular cookbooks and influencers focus on. I can attest that even the “Mediterranean Diet” is largely a cookbook fabrication created by non Mediterranean healthcare providers.

What goes in must come out, and I’m still holding out for a blue zones defecation guide book. Do they live to be 100 because they squat or sit? 

It seems that if, religion and asceticism aside, most people eat what they can and will according to supply and tastes… and also if roughly 750 million people are facing hunger and also if 48% of 70,000 monitored species are experiencing population declines (likely a gross underestimate in the Holocene extinction)…. Maybe arguing about the ethics of what a human eats isn’t doing much to make us better animals in our environment. 

Maybe it’s not doing much to make us better humans either.

But what it does do is highlight that fun and underrated anthropological term again. The one that illustrates perfectly what is happening in our anti-socially mediated society where disparity and difference only increases. Schizmogenesis… a word to make sense of both the apathy and animosity between those who experience economic success (and over-estimate their role in it) and those who don’t experience economic success (and underestimate their agency). Between those who identify with the safety of their sexual and/or romantic practices and those who identify with the liberation. And then it's tits for tats all the way down. I'm this, you're that. 

Schizmogenesis. A word to lay out the boundaries of who is what and what is who… a word to describe the process by which we conceptualize and manifest our identities in reality. The great illusion of duality. Taiji. Māyā. Avidyā.

As an Italian startup pleather company that creates fake leather textiles out of citrus fruit waste states “If your conscience stops at the cow and not the plastic, I have questions.”

Caring deeply about animal suffering and environmental impacts of our lifestyle choices is valid and important. These concerns are humane and empathetic sentiments capable of helping so much in the world. 

Asking questions surrounding our lifestyles could be the start of useful conversations. Except when these questions are weaponized with moral superiority and meant to spark debate instead of understanding.

The original question is poorly constructed and unexamined. Is there an ethics to eating meat? 

How can we form an ethics to eating? It treats survival as a choice requiring justification, when for all of human history and still today for billions of people it just isn’t a choice at all. 

Is there an ethics to breathing?

Sleeping?

Could there be an ethics surrounding our consumption and the methods of production?

Absolutely yes, and there are really productive solutions happening every day surrounding them. Helpful decisions by companies and individuals and communities.

It’s beautiful that monks can share vats of thousand year old vegan lacto-fermentables. But they aren’t proselytizing a lifestyle like the coffee table books that boast them.

Do people have a right to impose their moral beliefs on others? This is a bigger conversation to be sure, but it’s worth considering when discussing religion, dogma and moral rules dictating others’ behavior.

I’m still wondering about the ethics of how you poop.

Not because I want to be difficult but because I want to demonstrate an analogous absurdity. Using toilet paper contributes to deforestation, pollution and more water consumption than the use of bidets. Surely to not use it is helpful. Even more so using your hand or leaves etc... Unless you consider the hygienic implications of bacterial and viral transfer in the absence of running water. 

Imagine a world where I tout the way I wipe my arse as proof that I’ve somehow reached a higher level of spiritual or moral or healthful development (and you should consider it too!)

Imagine a world where I talk to people about the ancient bidets I saw in a Taschen coffee table book with the hopes that they understand how their existence validates my tush wiping choices as superior. 

Gauche? But why is how I approach what comes out of me any less relevant than how I approach what goes in? Am I not a 4th dimensional snake? Are all living beings and the toroidal and/or self-operating mathematical universe itself not a kind of oroboros? 

The only purpose conversations provocations like these have is to pit people, communities and cultures against each other. While anthropologists can and do argue that without schizmogenesis there would be no such thing as culture… radical theorists ( allô moi même) can feel at home in suggesting that maybe it’s time we examine our ideas of culture to begin with.  

Until then, we might stop arguing about what we eat and pull up with some popcorn (or not) and watch the political theatre coming to its grand finale. 

Or else we could further armor ourselves and join the revitalized global arms race, general hardening of opposing views and submission to authoritarianism.

Not exactly what friends generally do, but all is fair in love and unfair in war.

We can also learn skills like nonviolent communication, restorative justice, compassion and active listening and try to get to know each other and the world around us as we all quickly disappear regardless of what we’re chewing or how we eliminate it. Even when that what was once a who... and I'm not arguing this point. When we can consider the personhood lost of even the corn and the tomato on our plate, we're gonna get there. 

But until then why not enjoy a plant based meal together, chew the fat and remember to wash our hands if we use the number 2? 

I don't care what you eat or how you push it out. 

E tu?