How our existing cultural norms will finally succumb to veganism
A strange, sudden kind of collapse in our existing cultural norms, might take place — as veganism realigns our selfish goals with our moral beliefs
Our moral beliefs and selfish goals seem to have become features of a corporate landscape, incomprehensibly vast, difficult to grasp in scale. And when we look at the enormous sameness of our cultural norms, the variables that can be changed seem to be muzzled by larger forces. Our cultural norms appear to be incredibly stable.
It’s as if we are locked into a looped chain. Our moral beliefs and selfish goals bubble up from the swirling undergrowth in a continuous re-shaping of our cultural norms — and the successful versions of these cultural norms are fired back at us, influencing our moral beliefs and selfish goals — and so on.
And, although our cultural norms have all the grandeur of being the gatekeeper, vetting our moral beliefs and selfish goals, they also appear to be more than just the net result of our moral beliefs and selfish goals.
Our cultural norms also seem to be made-up of remnants of their own past, memories of old states of affairs, traditions, habits, ideologies, like old splashes of paint still lingering in the swirling mix, or ghosts in our increasingly complex machinery.
There is no single creator of our cultural norms. They may be capable of exporting misery, but there appears to be no author, no one to blame. They are, rather, an expression or materialization of a swirling mix of competing ideas and forces, both past and present.
As a result, it has become natural to think of veganism as being caught up in this mix, an abstract vision of moral utopia menaced constantly by the all-conquering hum of our selfish goals. Not exactly the commander and chief at the sharp end of cultural normality, more so an intriguing subplot.
And yet, we can make a distinction between the power and scale of our cultural norms and their ability to resist changes to whatever is generating this power and scale.
The power of a system and its capacity to bring about states of affairs on a grand scale may bear no relation to the ability of that system to resist changes to its own internal architecture that will result in different states of affairs being brought about.
An immensely powerful system may have, for no particular reason, a configuration that permits a significant reconfiguration. Perhaps, not unlike the Death Star, which despite having the massive power-projection capabilities of a galactic superweapon, possessed an internal weakness that was taken advantage of by a one-man starship.
The stability of our cultural norms may depend significantly on the re-usability of their moving parts. The more transferable the moving parts, the more susceptible our cultural norms may be to being morphed into something entirely different.
Whether or not our cultural norms are susceptible to change or not, may depend on whether or not some of our existing selfish goals can be preserved, redirected or re-calibrated towards different outcomes.
If our existing selfish goals can be incorporated into new states of affairs, their potency is not a force to be reckoned with, but rather, a force that can be exploited to support the aims of the new states of affairs.
That is, if veganism can tap into the inner nature of our desires — and conquer the most unmistakable markers or representatives of our food culture, our existing cultural norms may bend in ways previously thought not possible.
Our tendency to adopt a dishonest moral discourse and misrepresent our moral beliefs because of social pressures enacted upon us by our selfish goals may have an additional and quite profound effect on the stability of our cultural norms.
Where we perceive it as being too difficult to comply with our moral beliefs, we tend to negate the moral belief in our verbal discourse or behavior.
These dishonest moral beliefs are not an oversight or a moment of carelessness. We do not adopt dishonest moral beliefs because we have inadvertently loosened the slack regarding when to accept a moral belief as being valid.
Rather, we deliberately loosen the slack for the acceptance of a moral belief — and we do so — when certain dishonest moral beliefs conveniently fit our selfish goals.
These dishonest moral beliefs, alongside our selfish goals, are solidified into our cultural norms. They become our cultural norms and our cultural norms become distorted as a result.
Conversely, when our honest moral beliefs are subtracted from our public moral discourse because they are not compatible with our selfish goals, we end up with a kind of black market in the marketplace of ideas.
That is, underground moral beliefs, concepts, truths, concerns, values, that are not fully acknowledged or represented in the officially curated versions of our cultural norms.
But, if it is the case — that veganism can realign our selfish goals with our honest moral beliefs — as opposed to our dishonest moral beliefs — radical abrupt changes in the structure of our cultural norms can occur.
That is, if veganism is able to capture the most unmistakable markers or representatives of our food culture, it will become increasingly obvious that many people were holding moral beliefs that were different to the moral beliefs previously assumed to be held.
And as our actual moral beliefs become the dominant ideology — instead of social pressure to hold dishonest moral beliefs, there will be social pressure to hold honest moral beliefs — and increasing pressure to act according to these moral beliefs.
So, this strange, sudden kind of collapse, or cascade, in our existing cultural norms, might take place — as more and more established cultural flags are captured by veganism, leading to an increasingly honest public discourse about our actual moral beliefs — and increasing pressure to comply with these moral beliefs — which may in turn — increase the chances of veganism being able to capture more cultural flags, and so on.
