Planet PETA-ful
If you woke up this morning looking for yet another reason to dislike/poke fun of/impugn PETA, today is your lucky day.* The organization that thrives on single issue campaigning and high-profiled tomfoolery has now decided, in its infinite wisdom, to pursue a mission unprecedented in its mooniness: it wants to make Mars vegan. Forget for now that nobody lives on Mars. Minor detail. Instead, take a moment and be fair about this. Hear PETA out. Consider, will you, what a spokesperson has to say:
Colonizing Mars can give us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes on one planet and create a just civilization on another. Ensuring that Mars is a vegan planet (rather than importing animal products from Earth or creating factory farms on our new home) would protect animals from the horrors that they endure in the meat, egg, and dairy industries.**
Okay, after giving this claim due consideration, here is what I judiciously conclude: ludicrous! No, it’s worse than that. PETA is already an organization that tends to evoke heroic levels of mockery, so much so that it may alienate as many potential vegans as it converts—thereby collecting millions of donations to break even. (How many times have you heard: “you’re not a PETA person or anything are you?”) And now we have this Mars gambit. The sad thing about this idea isn’t that it’s absurd. It’s that it’s defeatist and arrogant and counterproductive.
For one, the proposal implicitly concedes that, here on earth, where billions of farm animals suffer daily, all hope is lost. Screw it, says PETA, Earth has been conquered by the omnivores. Let’s take our schtick to the solar system, where it’ll be easy to promote veganism to the intergalactic rubes who trickle in once the Martian gates open. It’s also arrogant—and contradictory—in that, while noting how humans have so effectively trounced the current global ecosystem, it gives a green light to head to Mars a “create” yet another civilization. In essence, invade another landscape.
Plus, you honestly think that the prime movers in Mars colonization (god I can’t believe I just wrote that phrase) are going to be the types of people to be told what to eat? Ha. To the contrary, they’re going to either be rich and powerful colonizer kings who are so accustomed to having their way that they just went to freakin’ Mars for the hell of it. Or, more likely, they’ll be a teeming mass of oppressed, dark-skinned humanity that Earth cast off and shot into space like a spitball, with vague directions scribbled on a napkin and a year’s worth of canned goods. (Kind of like how medieval communities rounded up the mentally infirm [sorry if that's the wrong phrase], put them on a ship, and shoved them to sea–hence, “ship of fools.”)
Whatever the case, this idea is a black hole of bad judgement, bad public relations, and bad news. PETA-ful.
*Actually your lucky day was back in August, when this story first broke, but for some reason it’s back in the spotlight, and on my plate. In any case, just work with me on this. Go with it.
**Can you imagine, like, getting an education, learning to think and write, getting a job, and being asked to write a press release about going to another planet?
Too late! Mars is already home (the dark side) to a colony of sausage eating Nazis waiting for an opportunity to strike! Lets blow them up before they can!
Although I have been enemies with Ingrid Newkirk of PETA since about the late 80s when she first announced PETA’s position that shelter pitbulls should be euthanized, thus initiating a rather harsh exchange, PETA is a contradiction because it does useful work as well as self-populating its own ship of fools. Here’s a rundown:
PETA’s vegan moon comment that JMC picks up on, as well as the other absurdist Pere Ubu type press releases that PETA issues, are carefully crafted to draw media attention. The Mars press release is not about any present change in or improvement in the material consideration afforded to critters. To the extent that media cooperates in this manipulation, usually to condemn the absurdity of PETAs ridiculous and media-friendly pronouncements, shows Media are as complicit and ridiculous if not as culpable as PETA. in promoting these statements There is an adage that no publicity is bad publicity. Walter Benjamin should be required reading for all who write about and are inadvertently coopted and manipulated by PETA.
Maybe PETA can colonize the moon and keep it vegan and Nazi free. More likely they would just whine
Yes, it’s always the ‘any publicity is good publicity’ angle for PeTA, so it seems. No doubt this was the original inspiration for their veg on Mars media spin, however:
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/421576/20130108/planned-village-mars-80-000-vegans.htm#.UPIXPY4c_8s
Once again, you miss the point. As other commentators have observed, this is another of Peta’s press-drawing tactics. The fact that you are blogging about it 5 months on shows it works.
While not a 100% advocate of Peta’s, the fact that Peta can keep critical issues in the public domain is key and has been key to the advancement of both environmental and animal rights causes, whatever sit-at-home tut-tutters may think.
Yes, meat-eaters may scoff at the ‘vegan planet’ ideal. But being laughed at is nothing new. When the term ‘animal rights’ was first coined it was laughed at. Veganism was an unknown word to all but vegans themselves. The number of times in the past I have heard the response ‘oh, you must be from the planet Vega’ (titter)…..
Nowadays, even my biker, hog-roasting buddies know what a vegan is. And they don’t laugh. Gone are the days when the vegan/animal movement used to promote the cause by proudly presenting their prowess at producing lentil puff cakes, and I for one am happy for its passing.
And finally, rather than shoot the messenger shouldn’t you be looking at the purpose of the message? Which surely takes the whole ethos of what the western world presents as an icon of western civilisation: the potential ability to travel to and populate another planet, and challenges what behaviours we are going to have to change in some utopian new world.
Practical? No. Ideological? Perhaps. Thought-provoking? Evidently, Yes.
Hi Robin!
You say, ‘Thought-provoking? Evidently, Yes.’
Isn’t this missing the point?
It is the meaningfulness (lack thereof, I mean) of the thoughts that are being provoked that is the problem.
Yes, PETA sees its mission to get any and all publicity. But the outcome of this strategy is to trivialise the issue and polarise public opinion. PETA’s message appeals, essentially, to those who agree.
It’s a bit like a football team scoring own goals because goals are the point of the game.
We must get together again for a beer sometime!
Kim
Actually I’ve never been asked “You’re not a PETA person are you?” Vegan 7 years and counting.
I think the Mars things is an interesting intellectual exercise. You have to conceive of a vegan civilisation before you can create one, so this is the visualisation process.
My support of PETA is tempered by their consistent encouragement of foppishness over pets, as if keeping animals as domestic slaves is some sort of norm.
Although I have issues with many of Peta’s current practices – most often of late the way they have been handing out awards to people like Temple Grandin and McDonalds, in other words, going more mainstream – it is important to remember that they are hugely responsible for raising public awareness across a whole range of issues. When they began in the 1970s, very few people were aware of veganism, to say nothing of other forms of animal cruelty. Their efforts have been invaluable for raising public awareness. Their website is a wonderful resource for so much information covering topics ranging from animal experimentation, to fur, to animals in entertainment – the list goes on. They typically are very generous in giving materials and guidance for those who want to make a difference in their own communities.
Although I may currently disagree with Peta on various issues, I certainly don’t believe they deserve my contempt. Why make fun of an organization that has historically done so much good? Instead, I save my criticism for those who torture and abuse animals.
I agree. Peta is Peta. But they are on the right side of the issue. And they are unquestionably effective.
Just today, my local paper (whose bailiwick includes VINE Sanctuary) ran a piece from Peta: “2013: Year of the Vegan?” http://www.vnews.com/opinion/3803854-95/vegan-eating-meat-heart
The paper also had a piece on the farm bill from PCRM!
http://www.vnews.com/opinion/3803925-95/dairy-farmers-government-nutrition
Not to tout the Valley News as exceptional — it runs as many hunting stories and photos as anyone — but rather to show that at least where Vermont borders New Hampshire, these issues are no longer so alien, it also included 2 animal rights advocates in its highlighting of 13 “Causes” columns from the past year:
http://www.vnews.com/news/townbytown/unity/3812349-95/chickens-jones-rights-sanctuary
http://www.vnews.com/news/townbytown/unity/3825187-95/animal-vvsa-program-spay
PETA’s website does indeed have a lot of materials, but I’m afraid to share them with omni friends because there are so many people who consider PETA to have zero credibility.
PETA’s silly publicity stunts make me cringe, but they aren’t the real problem. I dislike PETA because 1) they try to help animals by (in my opinion) harming people with their racy advertising and, more recently, an actual porn website, and 2) they operate kill shelters.
I don’t know if I agree with your assessment of what the first Mars colonizers will be like. There’s supposedly a whole class of would-be space explorer called “Saganites” (after Carl Sagan) and they’re pretty idealistic. Anybody who grew up watching Star Trek (which often serves as a great inspiration to those in space-related careers, myself included) and was drawn to its philosophy will lean this way. (I think humanity at large is supposed to be vegetarian by the TNG era, and the Vulcans adopted a non-violent diet even sooner.) Your comment about the “rich and powerful colonizer kings” probably IS a fairly accurate description of some O’Neillians, but just remember that they aren’t the only ones trying to get out there. http://theforvm.org/diary/bill-white/werner-von-braun-carl-sagan-gerard-oneill?page=176
That said, it does seem a little silly for PETA to be worrying about what a handful of Mars colonists will eat when we have much bigger problems right in front of us here on Earth. If we establish a civilization on another planet, that would indeed be a great chance to “start over.” But before we have a prayer of that happening, we have to convince people that our current civilization has messed up … and we’re nowhere near reaching critical mass on that effort.
Bottom line, though: if I ever become a Mars colonist (and I hope I’m not being full of hubris when I say it might happen), I’ll be raising vegan food and encouraging my neighbors to do likewise.
Leave PETA alone. They’ve done more for animals than you ever will, despite how much more infinitely smarter you are than Ingrid et al. When I was a kid, people starting starting talking about fur being a bad idea, cruel, abhorrent. Where did that come from? PETA! My late beloved grandmother, Fanny, quietly and without fanfare, one day put her mink coat away in the back of her closet and bought a green (non-down) parka. She wore that coat for years, and now, years after her death, I have it in my closet. It reminds me that people can change their mind, if their minds are opened. My grandmother’s family was in the fur business, by the way. Like every other grandmother in her community she could have stuck to that fur like glue, but she had learned something about its origins that made her think about wearing something different. PETA started that discussion and is continuing it. Love them or hate them, they succeed where millions fail. Don’t get me wrong, I like you and I enjoy reading what you write. But whose mind have you changed lately? Huh?
Bonnie,
I was going to write you privately but see no reason not to make this point publicly. First, there is a difference between impugning PETA as an organization and impugning a tactic. I did the latter–and I did so with some justification. I think using resources to promote a vegan Mars is ridiculous. But the real reason I write is your last line: “But whose mind have you changed lately? Huh?” There’s an ad hominem tone here that I find counterproductive. It’s almost as if you are happy with my purported irrelevance. The truth is I have no idea whose mind I have changed, just as you have no idea how many potential vegans PETA has alienated with absurd tactics. Please be careful about these kinds of comments. What I do here is a labor of love and your words are like a needle a centimeter away from a balloon.
James
Another though about Peta occurred to me. It seems that they are disliked by many other vegans (and now martians and venusians, too) not so much because of different opinions about killing abused animals or cooperating with fast food companies to very slightly improve their animal victims’ lives, but rather for some of their more public tactics. Peta embraces modern consumer culture in all its shallow marketing and vulgarity, which some of us might find distasteful but is why they are uniquely successful, since, after all, there is a profound message behind the theatrics and manipulative ad campaigns that keep that message in the public eye.
So while the world absurdly talks about colonizing Mars, why shouldn’t (or wouldn’t) Peta enter into that conversation? Let the cosmic imperialists know that they won’t be free of Peta even on Mars!