Two commenters seem concerned with my honey eating. But one seems more concerned to paint me into a corner:
So long as we agree, Tim, that you aren't a vegan and that you have a bunch of psychic defense mechanisms (e.g., mercury, gift, Buddhist, trees, etc) to justify your choices even when those choices violate your stated principles (i.e., that you are vegan).
This is the kind of beautiful soul syndrome (BS for short) that
a) Divides people who have more in common than they have differences
b) Pushes people into defiance
c) Paints the other as evil—with Hegel, I argue that this kind of painting is itself evil
d) Boxes the left into ever greater gyrations of cynicism and disillusionment
So in short, no—I don't agree that eating some honey that Sophie Jerram gave me makes me anything.
Catriona Sandilands (queer ecology star) has some stories about the early days of ecofeminism, in which it was made clear to non-vegans that they should not be made love to, because they were evil and smelled different. Wow.
This is the kind of thing that puts veganism squarely in the same box as consumerism—if we want out of that box, we have to start acting differently. I've written too many books on this to rehearse the arguments here, but I recommend starting with my essay “Let Them Eat Romanticism” in the book Cultures of Taste / Theories of Appetite. Or chapter 2 of Ecology without Nature.
Everything is sacred (Carlos Casteneda, confronted by a fan who was outraged at his eating a burger in a seedy New Mexico joint).
