Conflict Abolitionism

“I leave you in peace”. This must be one of the most undervalued statements a person can make to another. Most non-human animals are masters of this expression, but we humans are just starting to learn it properly. Well, to remember it rather, since we used to say it with conviction all the time, before someone decided that it might be a good idea to build a complete civilization out of forgetting it, sometime 10,000 years ago or so.

Since we started to expand and conquer the world, we have done anything but leave anyone else in peace. If we don’t kill them to eat them, we kill them for sport. If we don’t kill them at all, we slave them for work or pleasure. If we don’t slave them or kill them, we drive them away from their homes. If we don’t banish, slave or kill them, we destroy their resources so they cannot survive or go anywhere else. Our presence has become a constant threat to everyone else.

We even have complete “legitimate” professions for those humans who work full time in “disturbing the peace” of others: hunters, fishermen, exterminators, animal collectors, shooters, vivisectionists, animal farmers, animal fighters, trappers, pest controllers, animal dealers, bombers, loggers, fumigators, zoo curators, abattoir workers, animal traders, etc, etc.

For an abolitionist such as myself, it’s very easy to put distance from all of these people, and to campaign to abolish all these professions, but sometimes we have to face situations that are not based on such a clear-cut exploitationist scenarios, and where “conflict” seems to be more of an even keel problem. What about the Tanzanian farmer loosing his/her crops to raiding elephants? What about the Indian villager facing a hungry man-eating Bengal tiger? What about the Inuit trying to feed his family in the vegan-unfriendly Arctic?

These cases tell us that sometimes the “theory” of “leaving in peace all creatures” may not be a practical option that everyone has the luxury of being able to choose, and that the conflict of holding an abolitionist animal rights approach is not always easy to resolve in some practical circumstances. How should we then judge those under such circumstances? Are they “exempted” from the abolitionist process? Are they not part of a civilization driven by modern evolving principles?

Theoretically, the best way to judge them –if we need to– is to “empathise” with them fully, and see what we would do in the exact same circumstances. This is of course easily said that done, since we will never experience the exact same circumstances, even if we travel to where they are, try to live how they live, sleep in similar dwellings and encounter the same types of animals, since such circumstances are not only “external”, but also “internal” (our education, our experiences, our knowledge of the world, our cultural background, etc.).

In most cases we cannot change our background, although we could indeed spend sufficient time living in a completely different anthropological context, cut-off from our past, so effectively “substituting” our birth background by a fresh new one. However, we don’t really need to go to the North Pole for a few decades to “get the idea” of how the abolitionist conflicts plays out in exploitationist scenarios with a much reduced choice spectrum. This is because most of us can actually experience them right here in our homes, although we tend not to think too much about them, and let alone talk about them. There may be different types of animal “conflict” a vegan animal rights person may face living in the modern multicultural non-ethnic world of today’s civilization. For instance, we can struggle with “ideological conflicts”, “life-threatening conflicts”, “competition conflicts”, or “territorial conflicts”. Let’s go through a few examples of these I have faced myself –and I’m still facing – during my life in modern Europe.

I’m a vegan-animal rights-atheist-lefty person, and as such there is a classic ideological conflict that I have to endure –and I confess I have not managed to resolve it completely yet: “abortion”. First of all, I must say that, being a man, such conflict is bound to play very differently than if I was a woman –especially if I was pregnant. I suppose in such circumstances it may either be easier to resolve (if my own life is a stake) or in fact more difficult (maternal instincts at play), but I will never know, and I’ve never been close to any woman who intimately shared such conflict with me. Having said that, I can declare that, in this subject, I’ve always been “pro choice”. This is because of my general political affiliation to the left –which is traditionally promoter of women rights– but especially because of my detachment from any religion that would impose to me an anti-abortion doctrine. However, the vegan animal rights part of my ideological baggage has a “precautionary” element that tells me that we shouldn’t “assume” an animal is not sentient if it has a different nervous system than us, or, in terms of quantity of neurons and sensory receptors, it has a “smaller” nervous system than us. Since “sentience” is the threshold criterion for the exploitation choice (we vegans exploit non-sentient living beings: plants), and we know that as long as the creature has a nervous system there may be certain sentience we cannot ignore, as a precaution we don’t exploit any member of the Animal Kingdom, from sponges to plumbers. However, if we apply such “precautionary principle” to human embryos, shouldn’t we oppose to their killing? We could go down the route of only “accepting” abortions of embryos that haven’t developed into fetus yet, and still haven’t got any nervous system whatsoever, in addition to those abortions necessary to save the life of the mother. This is how I have traditionally resolved the conflict, and this is how I declare my “default” position about it.

However, in my mind sometimes I’m not certain about what this actually means in terms of “days of pregnancy”, and what happens in the cases where the death of the mother that wouldn’t abort is not certain, but just probable. I guess that I would have to trust Science to tell me when we can say there is already an active nervous system, and I would have to give full decision power to the mother in question who has only probabilities rather than certainties to inform her choice. This certainly still puts me in the “pro choice” box rather than in the “pro life” box (as those defending the anti-abortion option demagogically call themselves). However, Science has been notoriously slow in accepting the cognitive capabilities of many species, so how do I know that they are not underestimating the sentience of human fetuses? On the other side, being a defender of “rights” of the exploited and the oppressed, I cannot ignore the rights of women with unwanted pregnancies –from rape-like scenarios, not irresponsibility – whose lives may indeed be “ruined” by being forced to have children in environments where they are obliged to look after them without the minimum necessary resources and support –and then be hold accountable if they fail. Therefore, I’m still leaning towards the pro-choice side, but I consider the conflict “unresolved” and that I should be dealing with it on a case by case basis whilst Science continues to inform the Ethics around it. I must say that since I do have a strong allergy to religious fanatics, and these are the ones that tend to wave the anti-abortion flags –often with very ridiculous arguments– most vigorously, it has been very easily for me to take one “social” side on this issue, but I’m glad that so far I haven’t experienced a “personal” situation where I would be forced to resolve the conflict in the context of my own animal rights beliefs alone, as opposed to my anti-religious beliefs.

The abortion debate that for most of us only poses an “ideological conflict” may indeed become a “life-threatening conflict” for those women whose pregnancy poses serious health complications. Sometimes, our lives are threatened to such an extent by someone else, than a conflict becomes a matter of “life and death”. Although it can happen, it is not often a vegan animal rights person has become a possible victim of an animal predator. In cases like this, who could blame the vegans if they kill the animal to save their life? Recently there was a case on the news of a Polar bear fatal attack in Norway, and there is no reason to rule out the possibility that the expedition leader that shot the bear while it was mauling a second victim was not vegan himself. Would I have reacted differently? Probably not. However, more often than not, in the face of an animal predator of humans people tend to resort to excessively draconian and panicking measures, such as culling any animal they encounter of the same type “just in case”, or “putting down” the animal once the human cannot be saved and there is no longer immediate threat to others since it is then automatically assumed that from then on the predator is more likely to attack another human in the future, which may not necessarily be true. As an abolitionist I oppose to such measures, either when the death occurs because human fault (like the cases of human deaths in circuses or zoos) or when a wild animal wanders into a human settlement that happen to be placed in the middle of its hunting territory. The right ethical solution should be measures to prevent the animal getting close to other humans, or to reduce the vulnerability of future potential victims, not measures to “revenge” the death, or to “punish” the animal, often made to avoid the feeling of powerlessness rather than to reduce the danger. I’m of course completely opposed of putting down domestic animals such as dogs for belonging to a breed deemed to be too dangerous –i.e. American pit bull terriers– because after all such animals were “created” by humans by artificial selection often by people who were trying to enhance the aggressiveness now others blame on them. “Capital Punishment” and eugenic/cleansing “exterminations” –both exponents of the worst humanity can offer– are equally wrong for humans than for other animals, so better solutions should be found even if they end up been more complex and expensive.

I don’t know any vegan colleagues who had been attacked by a tiger, a hypo or a polar bear, but I do know many other cases of human-animal conflict that are common even in the lives of urban animal rights people, and because of that are a good way to test the robustness of their convictions and the integrity of their principles. These don’t involve dramatic encounters with huge beasts, but mundane meetings with small creatures.

There is something fundamentally healthy about maintaining a good relationship with someone less than an inch tall. It’s easy to be polite with giants, or with someone that, for all intent and purposes, is almost “you”, but our decency will be better tested when looking at the way we relate to those that are so distinctively different to us that our instincts would even doubt about whether they feel or think anything, whether they have personalities, or even whether they are alive at all. I am talking about insects and similar creepy crawlies who inhabit all the corners of our world.

Is there any vegan animal right person that has not faced a “competition conflict” with an insect (or any other invertebrate for that matter)? What do you do if a mosquito attempts to use your blood to feed its offspring in a summer evening? What do you do if that mosquito is from the malaria bearing Anopheles species, and you know about it? What do you do with slugs that are eating your dinner when is still growing in your inner-city allotment? What do you do if a wasp lands on the strawberry jam toast you are about to mouth while laying on your jacked picnic cloth in your local park in a sunny afternoon? All these creatures are entering in conflict with your because they are competing with a “food” resource you also want (your blood, your lettuce, your jam). I don’t know what do you do in these cases, but I can tell you what I normally do.

Regarding the mosquito, if I know that it cannot carry malaria I let it sting me (although I would do my best to prevent them to enter my home at night by closing all windows, since their buzzing may disturb my sleep). Yes, it’s a bit painful, but I don’t really need that drop of blood that much, so it’s only fair. However, if I was somewhere in the tropics in an Anopheles ridden country, the situation would certainly be different, although not impossible to resolve. I have indeed been in several occasions in these countries, and I found that talking the necessary precautions allowed me avoid the dilemma about what to do when having the mosquito already on my flesh ready to penetrate it. Good mosquito nets over my bed, and good insect repellent on my skin, have always done the trick for me. Conclusion: I have never killed a mosquito since I became vegan. Conflict mostly resolved – I say “mostly” because there may always be the possibility of a future encounter when I may react differently if a malarian mosquito slips through all the barriers and it’s ready to sting me.

As far as the wasps are concerned, being a great admirer of these beautiful animals, I would gladly give them my jam, and I could even made a few extra toast for them, since I know that moving slowly and avoiding any violent hand movements –unlike the typical panic reaction I normally see even from the most macho and butch looking humans – is usually sufficient to avoid getting stung (incidentally, the “extra” toasts for the wasps placed at a certain distance from my picnic food would decrease the chances that I would bite accidentally one of the wasps if I am not paying enough attention).

I don’t have an allotment –I would love to have one, though – but I can honestly say that if I had one I wouldn’t kill the slugs or snails that try to eat my produce. I would try to find obstacles to made as difficult as possible their access to my plants, and I would religiously remove them by hand to be relocated elsewhere if all vegan horticultural solutions ended up being insufficient. However, I have to say that at the movement, and for a few years now, I have been facing a very “active” conflict with a type of insect that rather than competing for my food, is actually competing for my space. This is therefore a “territorial conflict” many of you may be familiar with, and I will tell you in detail how I have been addressing it. This is the universal urban conflict between human beings and what people call common “house pests”.

I’m not talking about the cute mouse that occasionally visits my flat and, after a certain period of exploratory investigation, disappointingly leaves for better prospects elsewhere. I am talking about these universally unwelcomed human companions that can be found in most human dwelling in the world, to the horror of many. I’m talking about cockroaches. I don’t know how other vegans deal with them when they have them in their homes, but this is how I have been doing it:

In winter 2004 I moved into an old ground floor flat in the south of London. When summer arrived I noticed the appearance of a few small brown cockroaches in the kitchen (the “small” common Blatella germanica –don’t blame the Germans now, please), so I decided to monitor the situation to see if that would become a problem. They are quite small and very discrete, so they didn’t bother me that much –I’m not repelled at their sight as many people is – and they tended to appear at night only, so I didn’t think much of it. Since I also had a healthy population of house spiders I thought that perhaps they would take care of them without the need of any human interference. However, when the numbers started to grow slightly in the warmer days –not to the extreme of rendering inhospitability, though –I realised I had to do something.

Being a vegan animal rights person the option of just “exterminating” them with some poison was not in the cards. I was well aware that they didn’t mean me any harm, and as long as I kept the food out of their way and the house relatively clean the transmission of any disease would be quite unlikely. They were not competing with me for my food (if anything, they were recycling any of my discarded food), they would always try to get away from me politely (having recently evolved with unwelcoming humans, that old predator avoiding behaviour had become markedly reinforced), they wouldn’t bite me or anything like that (not that they could, with their tiny jaws), and possibly because of their dependency of water they seem confined to the kitchen alone (so, no risk of nasty surprises in the bedroom).

Therefore, we were simply talking about two species in the same space, and one of them –me– not really wanting the other there –for “comfort” reasons disguised as “sanitary”, really. In other words, a classic case of interspecific “territorial conflict”. Which had more right to be there? For me, that was a relevant question. I just arrived at my flat and they were already living in it, so from that point of view I was the intruder. But I was the one paying the rent so I believed that at some degree I was entitled to choose my flatmates. I presumed that previous tenants had tried unsuccessfully to get rid of them, so they were quite used to negotiate with humans. How far should I go in judging their entitlement? From the moment the flat was built? From the moment a human house was built in that spot? From the moment the first humans colonised the shores of the Thames? No matter how far I went, they seem to have been there first. As a taxonomical “Species” they are not autochthonous of the British Islands, not even of Europe, so perhaps that could be a good argument. They came from Africa, you see? But then again, Homo sapiens also came from Africa, so in this regard we are both immigrants, so this would not help my “claim”. On the other side, as a taxonomical “Order”, theirs (Blattodea) clearly trumps ours (Primates): they were already roaming this planet in the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs were still around and our whole Class of Mammals was represented by just a few shrew-like furries. They were most definitively here first, and I knew it.

So, I decided to sign a peace treaty with them, based on the following “rules”: 1) I would seal up all holes and cracks in the kitchen to minimise the areas they would be able to hide (and breed!), so they would have a limited space to expand. 2) I would never leave food or organic rubbish out and I would keep everything edible in the fridge or in closed containers, so if they wanted to stay they would have to contend themselves with very little to eat. 3) If I saw one during the day time, I would chase it until it would go out of sight. 4) If I saw one away from the kitchen, I would chase it until it returned to it or left the flat. 5) I would not deliberately kill them or poison them in any way. 6) If I saw them in their “reservation” (the kitchen) at the “legal” hours (between eleven PM and sunrise), I would leave them be “in peace”.

Initially, it seemed to work, and they seemed to learn quickly about my rules (obviously there was some sort of pseudo-natural selection occurring, since the ones that stuck to the rules, for being undisturbed, seemed to reproduce more successfully than those breaking them). In winter they went away (because of the cold, since I hardly ever have the heating on), but then the following summer they reappeared, and every time the population seem to grow a bit respect the previous year, until there was too much rule breaking for my likening. I tried to figure out where they exactly spend the day, since I had already blocked all the cracks and holes I could think of. I suspected that the fridge has something to do with it, so I moved it away from the wall, and there they were, in a surprisingly high enough number that made me temporarily abandon the “treaty” and enter a state of “emergency”. They obviously were roosting in the copious warm spaces inside the electrical appliances of my kitchen, which I couldn’t block. I had to find a much more radical and fast solution. I decided to Hoover the lot out.

It wasn’t my intention to kill them, I just wanted to mass-expatriate them, since the idea was to take the Hoover paper bag out immediately after the sucking, and let them crawl out in the garden. However, when I took it from the Hoover to put it into a plastic bag that I would then take downstairs to the rubbish bin (with a convenient opening so they could leave at night), I had a peek inside, and I could see that those that were still alive were very dusty and dizzy, and many others had perished during the process. I didn’t feel good about it. I felt as a genocider. That rushed “emergency” solution was obviously unsatisfactory, so I had to investigate alternative methods. I tried several electrical devises that emit high frequency sounds that are supposed to repel them; I tried scattering Bay leaves they are supposed to hate. I’m not sure if these methods had any effect, but every year there was always a moment when suddenly the population seemed to grow more, “rule breaking” seemed to spread too much, and I ended resorting to the Hoover again in a moment of weakness. I found myself involved in a practice caused by a territorial conflict that now I desperately wanted to abolish.

There had to be a better way, and if there wasn’t any already prescribed, I had to invent one myself. I was looking for a practical way to “catch” them for “repatriation” that would not involve their suffering or death, but they were way too fast for me to do it just “by hand”. First I tried the soapy water spray method. When I saw one breaking the rules, I would spray it with water that contained a bit of washing up liquid. The soap would cover some of their spiracles so they would get less oxygen in, which would slow them up enough so I could then pick them up by hand, open the window, blow the soap away from their spiracles, and let them go. However, especially with the very small ones, that didn’t seem to work (I couldn’t pick them up without hurting them), and in some cases I was too late so they died of suffocation before I had time to remove the soap, which of course made me feel very bad.

Another idea I had was relatively more successful. When I felt that the population had grown enough so there was some need for intervention, in the evenings I put cello tape in the areas where they normally go. Next morning I would find some stuck on it, and then carefully, using a toothpick, I would “un-stuck” them, put them into a bag, open the window, and let them go. However, this system wasn’t good enough, since despite the fact they never died in the process, sometimes I broke one of their legs when I tried to free them. Besides, there was the “psychological” issue of being stuck all night to the tape, which kind of tormented me.

Eventually, I found the best solution, and so far it seems that it is working quite well. I use one of those big white yoghurt plastic pots, completely clean and dry, and with all labels removed. When I notice an unwelcome increase of population, the pot catching session begins. Every time I see one at any time I endeavour to catch it with the pot for translocation –I manage most of the time, I must say. What I do is to flick it with my had very quickly (I’m getting good at it) in the direction of the pot, which makes it falls into it; then, for some mysterious reason, instead of trying to climb the sides of the pot and try to escape, they tend to run in circles at the bottom of it (quite possible caused by the translucent nature of the pot combined with the photophobic nature of their flight responses). This gives me sufficient time to go to the nearest window still holding the open pot and “free” them. If while I’m going to the window one does try to climb up the pot, a substantial tap with my finger on the top edge of the pot makes it fall again to the bottom. Somehow it works, and the whole operation takes no longer that five seconds. None of them get hurt in the process, as if I was using some sort of futuristic Insect Trek transporter that magically beam them up to the London’s streets in a jiff.

This method, combined with the continuous generous –but not altruistic– help from the house spider crews that can reliably be found predating at the corners where the roaches like to hang out, keeps the population down, and considerably reduces “rule breaking”, since those that are genetically more predisposed to wander far from the kitchen or be awake during the day will be removed from the population quickly not contributing to their next generation gene pool.

Now, after more than 30 generations, no more significant rule breaking and population boom occur anymore. The conflict seems to have been resolved, and now in my flat humans and roaches are no longer in mortal conflict. Although there is a considerable peace-keeping work involved for my part, every time I manage to free one of them to the outside world – with no harm done and the minimum stress possible– makes me feel good about myself, brightening my day. When I see them running in the garden trying to find a new dark crevice to make some sense to this new world of endless possibilities, I bid them adieu with a “I leave you in peace” greeting; they, collectively, seem to pay me in kind. Now I am actually glad to have them as flatmates.

There is an abolitionist way to address REAL animalist conflict –as opposed to the false conflicts that exploitationists use as justification for their abuses. There is, if you will, a type of “Conflict Abolitionism”, based on recognising the conflict in the first place, careful consideration of both parties’ interests and entitlements, avoiding “human convenience” as a criterion to resolve it, playing down the role of “custom” or “tradition” in the resolution, maintaining the abolitionist principles, accepting a human price to pay to compensate for our intrusion, being transigent with the outcome of an imperfect response, and on not giving up trying to find an improved solution.

During their lives abolitionists may often face real conflicts with actual animals, and sometimes is not that easy to avoid being hypocritical because of only applying abolitionism when judging other people’s behaviour. I said in several occasions that abolitionism is a process, so all abolitionists that are involved in it are constantly “improving” the way they travel the journey, getting better at it. Not only they manage to abolish more and more types of animal abuse and getting closer to major abolitions, but they also get better at the way they relate to all the animals they encounter on the way. None of us has “arrived” at the final destination yet, so we all have lots to do in our activist work, and lots to change in our own lifestyles and behaviours. Becoming vegetarian is not enough. Becoming vegan is not enough. Boycotting circus with animals is not enough. Boycotting films with performing animals is not enough. We need to keep changing our attitudes and improving our relationships with all the animals we encounter, no matter how small or unpopular, “out there” in the wide wild world, but also in the confines of our small comfortable homes, where nobody is looking.

Recognising that we are still in the beginning of the process as much as those that just joined us in our journey will help us to be less judgmental about them and find more reasons for reconciliation than for segregation. I know that I may have been lucky since so far I didn’t have to face the most difficult conflicts others had to –some of which are still without known satisfactory solutions– but what counts is the “attitude” towards facing them, and the perseverance towards resolving them at everyone’s satisfaction.

No human living in today’s world can help sharing part of the negative impact humanity has already inflicted on other inhabitants of this planet. No person is completely harmless to those around. But we can strive to be as “friendly” as possible to everyone, and to get better at it with time and dedication.

Appreciating “peace” is well worth it.

Jaysee Costa