Will Tuttle, Ph.D., one of the key figures in the modern animal rights movement, author of The World Peace Diet, has briefly and succinctly outlined the history and evolution of the global animal rights movement.
According to Dr. Tuttle, the official concept is that animals are placed on Earth to be used by humans, and that cruelty, as part of the process of using them, is perfectly acceptable. As a result, the professor believes, the animal rights movement is a serious threat to the existing power structure in the world.
The following is the Ph.D.’s full talk at the World Animal Rights Conference in Los Angeles at the end of July of this year.
“When we challenge this official view, we also question the power structure and worldview of this culture, as well as our culture’s accepted interpretation of its own history. We are all aware of numerous examples of false official concepts that are currently or have been in the past. As an example: “If you do not eat meat, milk and eggs, a person will die from protein deficiency”; “If the water is not enriched with fluorine, then the teeth will be damaged by caries”; “Animals have no soul”; “US foreign policy is aimed at establishing freedom and democracy around the world”; “To be healthy, you need to take medicine and be vaccinated,” and so on …
The root of the animal rights movement is questioning the official concept at its deepest level. Therefore, the animal rights movement is a serious threat to the existing power structure. In essence, the animal rights movement boils down to a vegan lifestyle that reduces our cruelty to animals to a minimum. And we can trace the roots of our movement going far back into the history of our society.
According to anthropological studies, about 8-10 thousand years ago, in the area where the state of Iraq is now located, people began to practice pastoralism – the possession and imprisonment of animals for food – first it was goats and sheep, and about 2 thousand years later to he added cows and other animals. I believe that this was the last major revolution in the history of our culture, which fundamentally changed our society and us, the people born in this culture.
For the first time, animals began to be viewed in terms of their marketability, instead of being perceived as independent, full of secrets, endowed with their own dignity, neighbors on the Planet. This revolution changed the orientation of values in culture: a wealthy elite stood out, owning cattle as a sign of their wealth.
The first major wars took place. And the very word “war”, in the old Sanskrit “gavyaa”, literally meant: “the desire to capture more cattle.” The word capitalism, in turn, comes from the Latin “capita” – “head”, in relation to the “head of cattle”, and with the development of a society involved in military activities, measured the wealth of the elite that owns the heads: animals and people captured in war.
The status of women was systematically reduced, and in the historical period that took place about 3 thousand years ago, they began to be bought and sold as a commodity. The status of wild animals was reduced to the status of pests, as they could pose a threat to the “capital” of the cattle owners. Science began to develop in the direction of finding methods to conquer and suppress animals and nature. At the same time, the prestige of the male gender developed as “macho”: a tamer and owner of livestock, strong, unthinking of his actions, and capable of extreme cruelty towards animals and rival cattle owners.
This aggressive culture spread militantly east of the Mediterranean and then to Europe and America. It is still spreading. We are born into this culture, which is based on the same principles and practices them every day.
The historical period that began some 2500 years ago has left us with evidence of the first speeches of prominent public figures in favor of compassion for animals and in favor of what today we would call veganism. In India, two contemporaries, Mahavir, the acclaimed teacher of the Jain traditions, and Shakyamuni Buddha, whom we know from history as the Buddha, both preached in favor of a vegetarian diet and required their students to refrain from owning any animals, from harming animals, and from eating them for food. Both traditions, the Jane tradition in particular, claim to have originated over 2500 years ago, and that the practice of a non-violent lifestyle by the followers of the religion goes back even further.
These were the first animal rights activists that we can accurately speak of today. The basis of their activism was the teaching and understanding of Ahimsa. Ahimsa is the doctrine of non-violence and the acceptance of the idea that violence against other sentient beings is not only unethical and brings suffering to them, but also inevitably brings suffering and burden to the one who is the source of violence, as well as to society itself.
Ahimsa is the basis of veganism, the desire to keep cruelty to sentient beings to a minimum through total non-intervention in the lives of animals or minimal interference, and granting animals sovereignty and the right to live their own lives in nature.
It is very important to understand that the possession of animals for food is the veiled core that defines our culture, and that each of us was or still is subject to the mentality dictated by the gastronomic traditions of our society: the mentality of dominance, the exclusion of the weaker from the circle of sympathy, reducing the importance of other creatures, elitism.
The spiritual prophets of India, with their preaching of Ahimsa, rejected and boycotted the cruel core of our culture as early as 2500 years ago, and were the very first vegans of whom knowledge has come down to us. They consciously tried to cut down on cruelty to animals, and pass this approach on to others. This powerful period of our cultural evolution, called by Karl Jaspers “Axial Age” (Axial Age), testified to the simultaneous or close in time appearance of such ethical giants as Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Socrates in the Mediterranean, Zarathustra in Persia, Lao Tzu and Chang Tzu in China , the prophet Isaiah and other prophets in the Middle East.
They all emphasized the importance of compassion for animals, the rejection of animal sacrifice, and taught that cruelty to animals boomerangs back to humans themselves. What goes around comes around. These ideas were spread by spiritual teachers and philosophers for centuries, and by the beginning of the Christian era, Buddhist monks had already established spiritual centers in the West, reaching as far as England, China and Africa, bringing with them the principles of ahimsa and veganism.
In the case of the ancient philosophers, I deliberately use the word “veganism” and not “vegetarianism” due to the fact that the motivation of those teachings corresponded to the motivation of veganism – reducing cruelty to sentient beings to a minimum.
With all the ideas of the ancient world intersecting each other, it is not surprising that many ancient chroniclers believed that Jesus Christ and his disciples abstained from eating animal flesh, and documents have come down to us that the first Christian fathers were vegetarians and quite possibly vegans.
A few centuries later, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, during the time of Emperor Constantine, the philosophy and practice of compassion for animals was brutally suppressed, and those who were suspected of refusing meat were brutally tortured and killed by Roman soldiers.
The practice of punishing compassion continued for several centuries after the fall of Rome. During the Middle Ages in Europe, vegetarian Catholics such as the Cathars and the Bogomils were suppressed and eventually completely exterminated by the church. In addition to the above, in the times of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, there were also other currents and individuals who promoted the philosophy of non-violence towards animals: in Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Sufi, Judaic and Christian religious schools.
During the Renaissance and the Renaissance, the power of the church declined, and as a result, modern science began to develop, but, unfortunately, this did not improve the fate of animals, but, on the contrary, gave rise to even more cruel exploitation of them for the sake of experiments, entertainment, the production of clothing and of course food. While before that there was some canon of respect for animals as creations of God, in the days of dominant materialism their existence was considered only as goods and resources in the mechanism of developing industrialism and in the conditions of the accelerated growth of the omnivorous human population. This continues to this day and poses a threat to all animals, as well as to nature and humanity itself due to large-scale destruction and destruction of nature and wildlife.
Intersecting philosophies from different parts of the world have always helped to challenge the official conception of our culture, and in the 19th and 20th centuries, this was evidenced by the rapid revival of vegetarianism and animal welfare ideas. This was largely inspired by the rediscovered teachings that came from the East to Europe and North America. Translations of the ancient Buddhist and Jain sacred sutras, Upanishads and Vedas, the Tao Te Chings and other Indian and Chinese texts, and the discovery of peoples thriving on a plant-based diet, have led many in the West to question their society’s norms of cruelty to animals.
The word “vegetarian” was formed in 1980 in place of the old “Pythagorean”. The experimentation and promotion of vegetarianism captivated many influential authors such as: Shelley, Byron, Bernard Shaw, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Louise May Alcott, Walter Besant, Helena Blavatsky, Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi and others. A Christian movement was also formed, which included several heads of churches, such as: William Cowherd in England and his protégé in America, William Metcalfe, who preached compassion for animals. Ellen White of the Seventh-day Adventist branch and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore of Unity Christian School preached veganism 40 years before the word “vegan” was coined.
Through their efforts, the idea of the benefits of plant-based eating was developed, and attention was drawn to the cruelty involved in the consumption of animal products. The first public organizations for the protection of animals were formed – such as RSPCA, ASPCA, Humane Society.
In 1944 in England, Donald Watson solidified the foundations of the modern animal rights movement. He coined the term “vegan” and founded the Vegan Society in London in direct challenge to the official version of our culture and its core. Donald Watson defined veganism as “a philosophy and way of life that excludes, as far as is practical, all forms of exploitation and cruelty to animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.”
Thus the vegan movement was born as a manifestation of the ancient and eternal truth of Ahimsa, and which is the heart of the animal rights movement. Since then, decades have passed, many books have been published, many studies have been published, numerous organizations and periodicals have been founded, a number of documentaries and websites have been created, all in a single human effort to reduce cruelty to animals.
As a result of all the above efforts, veganism and animal rights are increasingly coming to the fore, and the movement is gaining momentum, despite the gigantic resistance of all the institutions of our society, the hostility from our cultural traditions, and many other complexities involved in this process.
It is becoming increasingly clear that our cruelty to animals is a direct driver of environmental destruction, our physical and psychological illnesses, wars, famines, inequality and social cruelty, not to mention that this cruelty has no ethical justification whatsoever.
Groups and individuals come together to promote animal rights in various combinations of areas of protection, depending on what they are more inclined to, thus forming a series of competing trends. In addition, there has been a tendency, especially among large organizations, to run campaigns in conjunction with the animal exploitation industries in an attempt to influence these industries and induce them to reduce cruelty in their products. These campaigns may be financially successful for these animal rights organizations, boosting the flow of donations as a result of the announcement of one “victory” after another for the benefit of enslaved animals, but ironically, their implementation is associated with a huge risk for the animal rights movement and for veganism.
There are many reasons for this. One of them is the enormous power that the industry has to turn seeming victories for animals into victories of its own. This knocks the ground out from under the feet of the animal liberation movement when we start discussing what kind of slaughter is more humane. The consumer is more likely to consume more animal products if they are convinced that they are humane.
As a result of such campaigns, the status of animals as someone’s property is further strengthened. And as a movement, instead of directing people towards veganism, we direct them to vote in elections and with their wallets in stores for cruelty to animals, labeled as humanity.
This has led to the current state of our movement, a movement largely exploited and undermined by the cruelty industries. This is natural, given the power that the industry wields and our disunity in the choice of how to free animals from the cruelty of mankind as soon as possible. The cruelty to which animals are subjected as a result of the property status attached to them.
We live in a society whose core is the principle of complete dominance over animals, and each of us has received this suggestion from birth. When we question this principle, we join the centuries-old effort to liberate animals, and that is the essence of Ahimsa and veganism.
The vegan movement (which is a more active synonym for the animal rights movement) is a movement for the complete transformation of society, and in this it differs from any other social liberation movement. Conventional, routine cruelty to animals for food corrupts and undermines our primordial wisdom and sense of compassion, creating conditions that open the way for other forms of cruelty to animals, along with the manifestation of dominant behavior towards other people.
The vegan movement is radical in the sense that it goes to the very roots of our core problems, our cruelty. It requires us, those who advocate for veganism and animal rights, to cleanse our conscience of the cruelty and sense of exclusivity our society has instilled in us. What did the ancient teachers pay attention to, the pioneers of the animal rights movement. We can exploit animals as long as we exclude them from our circle of sympathy, which is why veganism is fundamentally opposed to exclusivity. Moreover, as vegans we are called to practice including not only animals but also humans in our circle of compassion.
The vegan movement requires us to become the change we want to see around us and treat all beings, including our opponents, with respect. This is the principle of veganism and Ahimsa as it has been understood and passed down from generation to generation throughout history. And in conclusion. We are living in a gigantic and deepening crisis that is giving us unprecedented opportunities. The old cover is being blown away more and more as a result of the multifaceted crisis of our society.
More and more people are realizing that the only real way for humanity to survive is to go vegan. Instead of negotiating with industries based on cruelty, we can turn to the wisdom of those who paved the way before us. Our strength lies in our ability to reduce the demand for animal products by educating people and leading them in the direction of eliminating these products from consumption.
Fortunately, we are witnessing the growth and multiplication of organizations and activist groups both in our country and around the world that promote the idea of veganism and the vegan lifestyle, as well as an increasing number of religious and spiritual groups that promote the same idea of compassion. This will enable you to move forward.
The idea of Ahimsa and veganism is extremely powerful because they resonate with our true essence, which is the desire to love, create, feel and compassion. Donald Watson and other pioneers have sown the seeds in the very depths of the obsolete official concept that entangles and fetters our society and destroys life on the Planet.
If each of us waters these sown seeds, and also plant our own, then a whole garden of compassion will grow, which will inevitably destroy the chains of cruelty and slavery laid in us. People will understand that just as we have enslaved animals, we have enslaved ourselves.
The vegan revolution – the animal rights revolution – was born centuries ago. We are entering the final stage of its implementation, this is a revolution of goodwill, joy, creative triumph, and it needs each of us! So join this noble ancient mission and together we will transform our society.
By liberating the animals, we will liberate ourselves, and enable the Earth to heal its wounds for the sake of our children and the children of all creatures living on it. The pull of the future is stronger than the pull of the past. The future will be vegan!”