I’ve written previously about how confused our vegan thinking is when it comes to our acceptance of the fact that we kill an untold number of insects everyday just in case we drive automobiles, so I won’t rehearse that argument now. What I’d like to take a look at now is how our rationale for why we can still be vegan even though we kill lots of insects should challenge the way we think about “roadkill” more generally. I’ll do this by comparing the rationale for vegans driving cars and killing insects to the rationale some have offered for why vegans ought not to eat honey, even when the honey comes from a beehive that bees have abandoned.

When we drive our cars, we invariably kill insects. As vegans, we excuse this killing by insisting that the unintentional causation of harm is not the same as the intentional causation of harm. We don’t mean to be killing insects, we mean only to be driving our cars, and so, as bad as it may be for insects to die, since we aren’t deliberately setting out to kill them, it’s not as bad as it could be. Without going into how unsatisfying this rationale may be, let’s just take it as given and suppose that it does excuse the so-called unintentional killing of insects.

Now, let’s think about an abandoned beehive. It’s empty of all sentient life. The bees have gone, who knows where, but they won’t be coming back. Some vegans would say that it would be wrong to eat the honey that’s in that beehive, on the grounds that it’s not ours to take, or because it would be better for other animals to have access to it, or because it would be disrespectful of all bees to take that which belonged once to some bees, or that, simply, vegans don’t eat or otherwise benefit from the products produced by other animals no matter what — just because. However, these rationales seem to me to create something of a conflict in our reasoning. Here’s why.

On the one hand, in the case of insects killed by our driving our cars, we can excuse the direct harm and death we cause because, we say, it is unintentional. On the other hand, we can’t excuse the eating of honey from an abandoned beehive even though there isn’t any direct harm caused to any individual. So, in the case of insect “roadkill” even though we kill others it doesn’t matter all that much really (not many people are giving up their cars) but in the case of eating honey, our principles are so important to us that even when no harm is done we won’t violate them.

What this seems to indicate is that, for many of us, our own thoughts and feelings are much more important to us than are the effects of our actions in the lives and deaths of others. But veganism isn’t suppposed to be about our own thoughts and feelings, it supposed to be about respecting the lives of others. As I often say, veganism is about recognizing that others ought to be left alone to live the lives they choose to live as free from interference as far as it’s possible.

We interfere in the lives of insects when we kill them with our cars, but we can excuse that. We wouldn’t be interfering in the lives of bees who’ve abandoned their beehive but vegans can’t excuse that.

Vegan thinking is oftentimes very confused.

(Some of you are probably rolling your eyes right now thinking, “Why does he have to go on about this? What’s this got to do with saving the lives of cows, whales, and tuna?” I often get the same feeling, but here’s why this is important: I’ve been told by prominent members of the animal rights community that to even raise these issues is problematic, that to even suggest that there may be ways for humans to benefit from the lives and work of bees makes me an enemy of animal rights, that it means that I use the language of “the exploiters” that I am “anti-vegan” or “ex-vegan”. When “the movement” is so opposed to rational discourse that seeks to remove the contradictions and hypocrisies within that movement, then the movement has ceased moving and it’s become an ideology subscribing to dogmatic beliefs in a manner more appropriate to a religion than any social movement at all. Indeed, at least one member of the movement has severed ties with an organization we both have worked at just because that organization won’t censor me. It’s a sad fact about this so-called movement – it isn’t going anywhere and it will continue to not be going anywhere for as long as ideologues refuse to acknowledge that the rationales that purport to ground it are incoherent.)