On Veganism

Besides being a generally liberal point of view, predicated on harm reduction--which is optional from a strictly individualist point of view--veganism is often challenged as a consumerist program that is evidently not anti-capitalist in any sense of the word. We have seen efforts to undermine this ideology in this vein through local farming, in that such is oppositional to the reality of acceleration and its simultaneous collapse of place-based space-time. But this localized point of view ruptures any sense of a non-anthropological machine via the whiny mouthpiece of Derrick Jensen. For those that have read A Language Older Than Words, the question of the domesticated animal gifting itself to the man with a knife makes certain forms of predation permissible within domestication. This romanticized version of weakness is pretty off-putting; yet the general question about animals is always what do they desire? And how can we determine this? Anthropomorphisms abound here.

In any event, ataraxia seems to provide a better way of interpreting eudaimonia, given that freedom from pain is a little more clear than flourishing in general. And yet, we still want, nay desire to define eudaimonia: more often than not, we pinpoint the purposes of animals in general as reproduction, or better, that there is a prior purpose working through us: the genetic desire for genes to reproduce themselves. I wonder if there is a genetic fallacy here caught up in the purported purposeful work of genes, so to speak.

I want to consider a proposition that I have been testing out for quite some time. It is an internal critique in the sense that it focuses in on an issue within the practicality of animal rights. It's simple: If all the animals were to be free tomorrow, which is an insane projection but no less a "natural" vegan desire, where the fuck would we put them? Rather than flood a welfare class, rather than supposing that all existing beings deserve to live, no matter how much it costs the collective that (re)sources sources and maximize outputs (without considering consequences), I propose that the best thing to do for domesticated animals is to advocate their deaths; to have a world wide slaughter of everything domesticated. And why do I make this argument? So that Wild might bring forth; so that domestication, perhaps on all fours with Hope, might grow some wings and fuck right off, or better, so that we might rip our wings and practice wild downgoing. On this reading, mink liberation is far more primitive in its trajectories than the liberation and consequent necessary containment of a factory farm chicken, pig, cow, or whatever.

There are a few ways of mitigating this proposition. On the one hand there is the view that even if one animal is housed and sheltered, and even if we continue to work so that these might receive the fruits of our labor, such is worth it for that animal. It is of course granted that one doesn't save the world in this instance; but I wonder if that's because the very idea cannot be maximized given the above assertion. There are just too many animals, and not enough space for companionship. It might very well be that the impossibility of total animal liberation casts doubt on its liberal framework. We, on the other hand, take what we like, articulating that releasing beings to (nature) being is all that one can do; always first for oneself, and then always afterwards for others. Yet it might be, of course, that these sorts of liberations provide a trajectory, a dream, a desire that defines us as bringing us forth and out of the city.

A better way of thinking this proposal is Singer's view that stipulates the best is to maximize satisfaction, as far as possible--and it can always be extended--without presupposing the value of any (sentient) kind over another. We primmies would suggest this to be foul smelling if only because sentience depends on provability; whereas the wild makes no such differences, and Singer is raising an anthropological machine. Singer is therefore on the way to Agamben, and requires Agamben to get out from colonizing sentience.

'As far as possible' pushes the individual saving mechanism to its limits; to push it beyond practicality into genuine possibility is our desire. To take apart the city is to destroy all anthropological machines. It is to release ourselves to nature, and to see if we can cut it outside the city walls, as many animals do already; outside the city, outside capital, where we cannot invent a meaning of strength, where strength is simply the ability to weather the storm.

I do not wish to house dependents. I do not wish to become weak through codependency. 

Let's Build a Toolbox.

I was talking with a friend the other day and it dawned on me that there is a real bad argument that has purchase in the unfixed series of associations that would be referred to, perhaps poorly, as the anarchist milieu. I say poorly because anarchism seems to coddle bodies according to a series of propositions that, as a set, are not consistent because these willing bodies (forms of potential--that is to say unactualized--negation), rarely work out contradictions. I take it to be obvious that working out these points of view would be the goal of having a rational position; yet, whether one wants to have a rational position, of course, depends on the desire to have one. 

Individualistic Primitive Insurrection has often been referred to as a form of privilege that has been awarded to males. Yet, it is only a large perhaps at this disjunction--since it is, after all, only disjunctive moments that ever arise. One may neither give a fuck about others, nor their feelings; or, alternatively, if they do, they might maintain that they are free to do so according to friendship. Accordingly this liberal mark, 'privilege' is a claim to being in an antagonistic mode already, without supposing that it may only be as such.--I might not be willing to be your friend. You might be my enemy. And, importantly, I might care enough to make a distinction--. Of course, 'privilege' is a quick quip meant to dismiss (yet, ironically, not in a patriarchal way) our right to have our own activities that are not predicated on allyship. So, the point here is that freedom has never been worked out, because, as always, the individual is meant to compromise to the general will. However, it seems perfectly possible that friends treat their own affinities with respect without bottoming out in the supposition that this must be extended in a massified way. (And this strikes me as a better worked out position if we take anarchy (an-arche, or anti-authoritarianism) seriously).

How do we respond to the liberal quip? Privilege depends on automated bodies. To be a white male, in a sense that doesn't simply invent terms on the spot, strikes me as being necessarily defined by way of capitalist flows. I want to say that privilege means something only if others are automated to make it so one is free. Here we have the sovereign body that forces others to automate their lives via fear. Others are put into a network that does work in a top-down telos. If the automated body is replaceable, it follows that more fear is warranted. If the body is irreplaceable some level of sovereignty is actually accorded to that body. On this we have an explanation of luddism, whereby bodies with "sovereign" skills were being displaced in terms of their prior ability to run the monarchs. Consequently, the master-slave relation, whereby the slave can tell the king/master to fuck off, depends on acknowledged irreplaceability. Getting back to the point: because privilege depends on automated bodies, it would seem that there is an obvious lacunae. What of the body that depends on none? What of the body that simply fucks off and trucks it alone? 

Perhaps one would say that males are bred to have this potential disposition. But, being prepared to enter into the free market is hardly identical to walking away from everything because Everything here is to be accepted according to male privilege, and at that moment, the Outside is rejected. In our view (cf. Hello) it is only worth anything Qualitative if it is outside capital. It might be articulated that some males tend to fuck off from their responsibilities in domestic situations, that statistically this is simply a fact. But it doesn't  follow that just because some fail to address their responsibilities, it follows that I have a responsibility to fix the world according to a cultural essence (aka, someone else's point of view as an imposition on my own desires). This is just a bad analogy and a bad generalization. As a matter of fact it is my Obligation to the Outside (the obligation to whatever) that denies all humanisms which belong to Everything. If the argument is that Individualism is a stoicism that is more likely (again statistically) to be manifested by males, one counter argument is that stoicism comports well with the lacunae above, and that there is nothing in principle that says womyn identifying bodies couldn't do the same. And if the interlocutor rejects this position, they are clearly guilty of having put womyn into an essentialist box.

Besides, it's ridiculous to suppose that all bodies are coded according to two flows of potentiality. Not only is this a bad view of the humyn spirit that may only do X in a context, it also fails to address that bodily desire is in some sense prior to culture, prior to nurture, a whatever body. Being outside smashes the liberal feminist position because it is part and parcel defined in terms of Everything. The trick, and they may not listen, is to demand an exacting about the analogy. If privilege is used, the question is whether I have any particular abilities that depend on others in a non-trivial way, given that everyone within Everything has this issue on the plate, and it is only a matter of degree perhaps cashed out poorly.  

So my friends: Be bold. Demand that the other specify exactly what they mean. Cut your dependencies on others being automated in a particular way. Get used to the way in which being provides on its anarchic terms. Enemies, Anarchists: We Will Smash Every Culture Machine you create. Bring on the Consequences.

Perhaps there is a sense in which might is right is patriarchal. I do not believe in morality, with reservations about 'believing in', fully acknowledged; instead, there just are consequences. But having power, or being strong, is a matter of habit that, in principle, can be maintained by anyone with a strong enough will. Are boys raised to have stronger wills? Not if we accept that everyone is being engulfed by the monstrous body that is Everything; and not if we accept life Outside as our telos, since this is necessarily outside the desires of civilige, and bodies must will it. Is there anything in principle that makes it so that womyn cannot develop, nay, sharpen their will? Are we raising statistics again here to say something that isn't really said? Just because culture produces an interesting statistical (reductive) fact about the totality of Everything doesn't mean it follows for any particular body. That's just a distributive fallacy taken from a collective scrutiny that fails to address the matter of degree, predicated on automated bodies, when it comes to privilege. 

It doesn't take privilege to get Outside; it takes guts and courage. It doesn't take privilege to have courage because there is nothing about being outside that is comparable to being in Everything. And besides, having privilege in Everything is hardly desired by Individualist Primitive Insurrection. They say it's analogous to patriarchal privilege; we ask: specify the analogy and argue against its conflicting features; if these features are "essential" to our position, clearly the dismissal is irrational. Of course, this is fine, but, at that moment, it's no longer our problem (outside of consequences--that we should desire).

Be Bold. You don't need frenemies. Fuck Compromise. When your heart starts pounding in your chest, you are on the way to downgoing; you are transcending your limits. And always, as always, do not fear consequences, because it is only these that make life worth living.