Hating Vegans and Moral Distress

 

Most people are indifferent to vegetarians and vegans some however dislike them and a few appear to hate vegans. Kristof Dhont and Joachim Stoeber ask “what drives people to lash out at others who choose to eschew eating animals out of compassion?” (1) The anger of these people is mostly directed at vegans but also applies to vegetarians. In the rest of this posting I will use the term veg*ns to refer to both vegans and vegetarians. In what follows I will outline two reasons Dhont and Stoeber give for this anger and then examine whether these reasons can justify anger. I will argue they can’t. In the course of my arguments I will also argue that one reason why some people dislike veg*ns is caused by a feeling of moral distress. Lastly I will suggest that my argument involving moral distress might be applicable in more broadly.

First let us consider what is meant by moral distress. Moral distress might be defined as the distress someone feels when she knows the right action to take but is constrained from taking it. Moral distress so defined differs from moral dilemmas which can also cause distress. A moral dilemma is when an agent is unable to choose between two moral options. Someone experiencing moral distress has no doubt about the moral option she should choose. A soldier ordered by her commander to carry out some order which she knows is wrong might suffer from moral distress but she isn’t facing a moral dilemma. In most cases of moral distress the constraining element is externally imposed. However in what follows I will assume that the constraining element might also be internally imposed. An agent feels the pull of morality but is constrained by some of her other non-moral desires. For instance someone might believe being unfaithful to her partner is wrong but the pleasure of infidelity constrains her ability to do what she considers to be right thing to do causing her to suffer from moral distress. In what follows moral distress will refer to internally imposed moral distress.

Let us now consider hating veg*ns and moral distress. Many of the statements by those who dislike veg*ns are directed at the veg*ns personally rather than being focussed on their arguments in favour of veg*nism. Can this direction be morally justified? According to Dhont and Stoeber some meat eaters feel that veg*ns, by not eating meat are expressing moral disapproval of their meat eating. Let us accept that even if most veg*ns don’t explicitly express such disapproval that their behaviour does so implicitly. I now want to argue that this disapproval leads to moral distress and that this distress cannot justify their anger. First let us assume that a meat eater believes veg*ns disapproval is justified. She feels the pull of morality but some of her other desires outweigh this moral pull. She has conflicting desires because she desires to eat meat and act morally and this conflict causes moral distress. She relieves this distress by expressing anger with veg*ns. Her anger is directed at veg*ns because they remind her of her moral inadequacy. However such anger is both misplaced and unjustified. It is misplaced because it fails address the real cause of his distress, her rejection of the pull of morality. She is shooting the messenger and avoiding addressing the message. Her anger is unjustified because she accepts the veg*n case. Secondly let us assume our meat eater doesn’t accept the veg*n case and believes veg*n’s disapproval is unjustified. In order to be consistent she must also believe that the argument used by veg*ns to support not eating meat is flawed. Let us briefly consider the veg*n argument. The veg*n argument has two premises. First a veg*n might suggest that it is wrong to cause any creature to suffer against its will for our pleasure. Secondly she might suggest that meat eaters eat meat for their own pleasure. However the second premise has not always been true. Someone living in a hunter gatherer society might have needed to eat meat in order to survive.  Nonetheless in most parts of the world someone can live a perfectly healthy life without eating meat. It would seem to be difficult to reject the second premise. Let us accept that in most places people don’t have to eat meat and eating meat is a lifestyle choice. It follows that if meat eaters are to reject veg*n’s argument that they must find good reason to reject the first premise. For instance they might argue that animals which are reared in good conditions and are slaughtered humanely don’t suffer against their will. However if a meat eater believes her arguments against the veg*n one is successful it is hard to see what reason she has to be angry with veg*ns. We are usually become angry because of some wrong done to us or others we care about. In the above scenario even if a meat eater believes veg*ns are misguided about the wrongness of eating meat this gives her no reason to believe that they wrong her and other meat eaters, he has no reason to feel angry. Perhaps then meat eaters hate veg*ns it is because deep down they have a lingering belief that their arguments for eating meat are contrived and don’t fully dismiss the pull of the veg*n argument. If meat eaters can’t fully dismiss the veg*n argument then this causes moral distress. This distress causes anger which once again is directed at veg*ns because meat eaters remind them of this distress. However once again such anger is both misplaced unjustified because it doesn’t address the real cause of meat eaters’ moral distress.

Dhont and Stoeber advance a second reason to explain why some meat eaters become angry with veg*ns. Some meat eaters might suggest veg*ns damage society and that this justifies their anger. Their argument contains two premises and might be summarised as follows. Firstly society is valuable and it is wrong to damage it. Secondly veg*ns damage society because they damage social cohesion, collective order and stability. It follows that because veg*n way of life damages society that it is wrong and meat eaters anger can be justified. Let us call this argument the social cohesion argument. Let us accept the second premise. However the early Christian martyrs, Anti-slavery protesters and Suffragettes all damaged the social cohesion of the societies they lived in. Some members of these societies did become angry with Christians, Anti-slavery protesters and Suffragettes. If we are to accept the social cohesion argument then we must conclude that their anger was justified. It seems hard to accept such a conclusion. If we accept the second premise of the social cohesion argument but reject the conclusion then we must reject the first premise. It is hard to see how this might be done but perhaps the first premise might be amended as follows. Society is valuable and we shouldn’t damage the society we live in unless the cause we do so for is just.  It follows that if we damage the social cohesion of the society we live in because it is unjust that far from damaging society we are improving it.  It follows that our anger with people for damaging social cohesion cannot be justified if the cause these people are fighting for is a just one. It further follows the argument about veg*ns damaging social cohesion reverts to our original argument about whether veg*ism can be justified.

However the above argument might be modified. It might be argued even if the fact that veg*ns damage social cohesion doesn’t provide a reason for anger that they also damage the natural order of things and this might justify their anger. This argument claims that veg*nism is unnatural. This is a dangerous argument to make for many people in the past might argued that the patriarchy was part of the natural order. Nonetheless let us accept that it was natural for our ancestors to eat meat. However if we argue from the above premise that it is natural to eat meat means veg*nism is wrong then we must introduce a second premise. We must assume that our nature is permanently fixed. It is easy to call what is necessary for an animal to survive natural when in fact it is just necessary at the time. For instance perhaps it is necessary for hunter gatherers to eat meat in order to survive but meat eating isn’t a necessity for a modern city dweller. If a meat eater isn’t prepared to accept this second premise that our nature is permanently fixed then she has no justification based on our nature to become angry with veg*ns. Once again it would appear that if a meat becomes angry with veg*ns her anger is due to internal moral conflict, moral distress. However for the sake of argument let us assume that our nature is permanently fixed. Nonetheless even if we accept this unlikely assumption there is still no justification for meat eaters becoming angry with veg*ns. Veg*ns might be misguided but they don’t harm meat eaters and so give no cause for anger. Once again if meat eaters become angry with veg*ns and this would appear to be caused by internal moral conflict, moral distress.

In conclusion I accept that most meat eaters don’t accept the pull of the veg*n argument and as a result don’t become angry with veg*ns, they simply accept them.  However I have argued that some meat eaters who do dislike veg*ns do so, not because they feel they are doing something wrong but because they feel the pull of veg*n arguments at least to some degree. I further argued that this pull together with their desire to eat meat causes them to suffer internal conflict or moral distress. I conclude that such anger is both misplaced and unjustified. I further concluded that hating veg*ns both matters and is wrong. I would suggest that moral distress can lead to hate in even more important areas. Some people seem to dislike BLM activists. I would suggest that sometimes this dislike originates in a similar way to the dislike of veg*ns. Those who dislike BLM activists might feel the moral pull of the BLM cause but resist bowing to it because they are unwilling to make sacrifices to aid the cause. This conflict causes moral distress. In fairness some deprived people have very little to sacrifice. Much the same argument might be applied to some cases of misogyny.

1. https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/vegan-resistance

Moral Distress and Autonomy

In Ian McEwan’s book 'The Children’s Act' we have a clear example of moral distress. A judge has to make a decision which is in a child’s best interests when these conflict with his parent’s autonomous wishes. This posting will consider moral distress. What do we mean by moral distress? Moral distress was defined by Jameton as a phenomenon in which someone knows the right action to take, but is constrained from taking it. (1) Moral distress is usually considered in a medical setting but can occur in other areas. For instance a soldier might feel moral distress when carrying out an order which she believes to be morally wrong. It is important to clearly differentiate between distress in general and moral distress. For instance a nurse might be distressed because she feels empathy for a patient’s suffering. However her distress isn’t moral distress. It is also important to be clear about difference between distress caused by moral dilemmas and moral distress. For instance someone might feel distressed because she must either lie to a friend or cause her friend to suffer. She doesn’t know the right thing to do and is experiencing a moral dilemma but not moral distress as defined above. A nurse helping to resuscitate a terminally ill patient suffering great pain might become distressed because she feels she is carrying out an action which she believes is wrong, is suffering moral distress. Moral dilemmas are self-imposed. Moral distress is imposed on the sufferer by others. Both moral dilemmas and moral distress can cause moral injury which can be harmful but in this posting I will only be concerned with moral distress.

What sort of others can cause moral distress? I would suggest moral distress can be caused by two sorts of others. Firstly it can be caused by some authority. This might happen when there is a difference between what someone believes is the right thing to do and what some authority with power over her wants her to do. For example a soldier might suffer moral distress when ordered by her superiors to shell a village which she believes contains a large number of civilians. In a healthcare setting if systems are set up to provide good ethical guidance for healthcare workers this form of moral distress might be reduced. Such guidance might be particularly important during health care emergencies such as the covid-19 outbreak. Secondly moral distress can be caused by respecting someone’s autonomy. For instance a nurse who continues to give a competent patient treatment, which she believes is futile and causes suffering, because the patient requests that her treatment continues.

Most work on moral distress focusses on distress caused by authority. In this posting I want to consider moral distress caused by respecting someone’s autonomy. I will argue that sometimes such distress is sometimes inevitable and difficult to reduce. Someone suffering from moral distress believes she is being asked to do something she believes is wrong. This wrong can take two forms. Firstly respecting someone’s autonomy means that she is asked to do something which conflicts with her beliefs. Secondly respecting someone’s autonomy forces someone to do something wrong by preventing her from acting beneficently. It might be suggested that one way of averting moral distress is for the person suffering the distress to opt out from carrying out the action which is causing the distress. However opting out isn’t easy for someone who believes in respecting autonomy. I would suggest that if you care about someone then you must care about what they care about to some degree even when what they care about conflicts with your beliefs. Caring about someone makes opting out of helping an autonomous person achieve her goals difficult. Caring about differs from caring for. I can care for someone whilst ignoring her wishes but this form of caring is caring in much the same way as someone cares for a child or even a dog. Caring about someone means that the cared about person’s autonomous decisions must carry some weight to the carer and cannot be easily dismissed by the carer. I would further suggest that someone cannot feel genuine empathy for someone if she doesn’t care about what the person she feels empathy for cares about.

Let us assume that respecting autonomy matters and that autonomy is a useful. First let us consider someone who is in moral distress because respecting someone’s autonomous decision means she feels she is prevented from acting beneficently. For instance the nurse in the example I have used above. I would suggest that if the nurse accepts that respecting her patient’s autonomy matters that her moral distress is inevitable. It might be objected that my suggestion depends on a particular account of autonomy and that if we adopted a different account her distress could be avoided. I am using a primitive or Millian account of autonomy. My objector might then suggest that if we adopted a substantive account of autonomy which requires that an autonomous decision must be in a patient’s best interests that the conflict between acting beneficently and respecting autonomy would disappear and with it the moral distress. In response to my objector I will now argue that if we accept a substantive account of autonomy that this account becomes redundant. Let us assume that an autonomous decision isn’t simply some decision made with only reference to what the maker cares about but must also concur with some substantive norms. An autonomous decision must be a good decision. However if we accept that an autonomous decision can’t be a bad decision then the whole idea of an autonomous decision isn’t really much use and we can simply replace all autonomous decisions by good decisions. Let us consider a nurse caring for a terminally ill patient who has one treatment option withdrawn, which the patient desires, because it is regarded as a futile option. If the nurse in question believes in a substantive account of autonomy then this option withdrawal against the patient’s wishes means she will feel no moral distress due to a failure to respect patient autonomy; the patient’s wishes weren’t good wishes because the treatment option was futile and hence weren’t autonomous wishes. If we accept a substantive account of autonomy then the idea of an autonomous decision becomes redundant and can be replaced by a good decision. If we accept that autonomy matters we must be prepared to accept that autonomous decisions can be bad decisions. We must be prepared to accept a primitive account of autonomy. Accepting that autonomous decisions can be bad decisions means that respecting autonomy and acting beneficently will sometimes clash causing inevitable moral distress. It might be argued that opting out of acting might combat this moral distress. I would argue that this option isn’t available in a caring setting. In a caring profession caring about what someone believes to be wrong way is better than not caring at all. It follows that respecting autonomy in a caring profession sometimes makes moral distress inevitable.

My objector might accept a primitive account of autonomy but still suggest that moral distress is not inevitable. She might suggest that autonomy is connected to of my “real self” as opposed to my empirical or actual self. She might proceed to suggest that if we did so my ‘real self’ wouldn’t make bad decisions and that respecting autonomy wouldn’t lead to moral distress. This might lead to the position where someone might think it right to ignore an agent’s intuitively autonomous decision because she believes it does not reflect his real self. I would reject my objector’s suggestion for two reasons. Firstly the world is populated by real people rather than idealised people. Secondly if we accept autonomy is only connected to idealised people who don’t make bad decisions then once again the concept of autonomy becomes redundant and can be replaced by good decision making,

Let us now consider cases where respecting someone’s autonomous decision causes moral distress because it conflicts with the distressed person’s beliefs. For instance a nurse’s religious beliefs might mean she believes we must do all we can to maintain life. Let us assume that she is nursing a terminally patient who isn’t in pain and is expected to continue enjoying a reasonable standard of life for some time. Let us also assume that this patient has made a last directive stating that if she goes into cardiac arrest that she isn’t to be resuscitated. The patient goes into cardiac arrest and the nurse suffers from moral distress because she can’t resuscitate her. Our nurse’s distress is caused by respecting her patient’s autonomy expressed in the last directive. I would suggest that in such scenarios respecting autonomy makes moral distress inevitable. Once again an objector might reject my suggestion. She might attempt to do so not by suggesting that we replace a primitive concept of autonomy by a substantive one but by limiting the domain of autonomous decision making. The domain of autonomous decisions is limited to those decisions which don’t clash with certain basic or religious beliefs. In the example used above the nurse might not suffer moral distress due to respecting autonomy because she believes the patient’s decision isn’t really an autonomous decision because it doesn’t belong in the domain of autonomous decisions. She may of course be forced to respect it by authority. Most hospitals have a policy to respect patients’ last directives. However the basic cause of her moral distress remains respecting patient autonomy. There are two arguments against accepting my objector’s suggestion. Firstly it might be argued that restricting the domain of autonomous decision making removes the importance of autonomy and makes it peripheral to our lives. Someone might end up in a situation in which she could autonomously decide to have an ice cream but couldn’t autonomously decide to have sex if she wasn’t married. Autonomy is about self-government and self-government must of necessity include those decisions which are central to our lives. If the nurse above suffers no moral distress due to respecting autonomy by adopting a limited domain of autonomy then her lack of distress is due to her adopting a deficient idea about the domain of autonomy. Secondly I would argue that any such limitation autonomy is really a surreptitious attempt to reintroduce a substantive concept of autonomy. The domain of autonomous decisions is limited because a larger domain would permit some people to make bad decisions. It is now possible to employ the argument used above against substantive accounts of autonomy. If autonomous decisions cannot be bad decisions then the concept becomes redundant. It follows that respecting someone’s autonomous decision inevitably causes moral distress when the decision conflicts with the respecter’s beliefs.

I have argued that the moral distress caused by respecting autonomy is sometimes inevitable and must simply be accepted by us as the price we pay for viewing other people as the sort of creatures who can decide how to live their lives. We may of course try to get someone to change her mind but if we can’t then respecting her as a particular person and not some idealised person means accepting her decisions and sometimes that means accepting moral distress.

1. Jameton, A. (1984). Nursing practice: The ethical issues. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall