The starving vegan, or, what is hypocrisy.

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Imagine, if you will, a vegan trapped in miles and miles of flat, desert plain. Next to his location is a large pool of water, suitable for drinking, but no fish or other edible things swim inside. In fact, there are absolutely no animals whatsoever nearby; his only source of food is a large hamburger. We won't dwell on how he got into this situation, as it is irrelevent for this discussion; just assume that he did.

The vegan has a radio, and has radio'd for help. His calls have been answered, and he has been told as much on the radio. Rescue planes have searched all around him and, he's told, it will take one more day to search the last possible area, which is where he is. However, it has already been several days and while has has been well-hydrated by the lake he knows that he can't last another day without starving...unless he eats the hamburger, in which case he will last long enough for the rescue planes to find and save him. The working definition of vegan that I have is that he has made a moral decision to not eat any meat. Assuming that he is in enough of a sane state of mind to make a rational decision, I ask the question...if he eats the hamburger, is he a hypocrite?


At first I thought the answer was yes, but now I argue no. Why? Let's look at the decision tree for his binary decision. If he does not eat the hamburger, he essentially 'saves' one hamburger from being eaten, and dies. If he does eat the hamburger, he has caused one hamburger to be eaten, but he lives. If he lives however, he can stop many more hamburgers from being eaten through his activism. Is it then hypocrisy to eat the hamburger, then, when he can stop many more from being eaten if he eats it and lives?

I use the starving vegan and the hamburger as an in-a-vacuum example to show what I'm trying to get at here. Namely, what is hypocrisy? I thought I knew the answer until I considered examples like the above, and now I'm not so sure. What does everyone else think?
 
Somehow, first thing that came to my mind was the Donner party. Now I wish I skipped the first part, but the principle is the same, I think the vegan is a hypocrite but he did what he had to do.

Some people are strong-willed enough to hunger-strike and starve themselves for their principles, but humans in general are programmed by evolution/god/alien visitors to survive; it's even acknowledged under the custom of the sea.
 
Most vegetarians/vegans operate under the belief that it's morally wrong to eat meat given the fact that modern human society can feed themselves without it. So there's plenty of room for exigent circumstances like this.
 
i wouldnt call that hypocrisy, tbh. Being a vegan/vegitarian applies when you have the choice to avoid meat or animal products. But if a hamburger is the only thing between you and death, youd eat the hamburger without thinking twice.
 
I guess I'm in the minority, so I want to get something straight.

I've always percieved being Vegetarian as avoiding meat products because you're contributing to the suffering of animals. I'm not a 100% vegetarian myself, but it's what I've been told. As a result, it should always be morally wrong for them to eat meat, because the hamburger came from some factory farm where cows are brutally slaughtered in some horrible fashion. I don't think exigent circumstances relieve the vegetarian of his hypocrasy, but it does offer a reasonable, and excusable, rationale for what he did.

If we replaced vegetarian with Amnesty International member, and replaced the hamburger with Secret Police pointing a gun forcing the victim to kill someone else, would s/he be a killer (and hypocrite)?
 
To put the op question more succinctly, do the ends justify the means (If I'm right in saying so)?
However, there's also the issue of how eating the hamburger can be considered immoral, because unlike a person who will go to a shop and buy meat products, who is fuelling the demand for killing animals, this hamburger is already there, and eating it doesn't really change anything. It's a moot point though if she has money to buy a hamburger, in which case I would say it is a matter of whether you want to be absolute in your morality or are willing to bend it to be more practical.
 
People, please. I was using the starving vegan as an in-a-vacuum example of what I was saying. Let's get past the part of whether or not the hamburger was already from a dead cow, it is meaningless and irrelevent. Let's assume that the man only cares about the number of hamburgers consumed, no matter how silly this belief is. There, now, is he hypocritical for pursuing the path that causes less hamburgers to be consumed overall, even though he ends up consuming one?

I'm not arguing about vegetarianism or veganism or whatever here. I'm talking about apparant hypocrisy in general.
 
I believe that a hypocrite is one who delibrately opposes his moral or ethnic views; thus, with your starving vegan story, he wouldn't be hypocritical if he ate the hamburger because it's a choice between life or death.
 
If your values come before your survival, that's not right. Unless you're Legendary "I'd rather die like a man than live like a Coward" Curt or something.

Any self described vegan who chose to kill himself instead of eat meat is not helping the planet/animal rights imo.

Just a sidenote, I live with my ex-girlfriend who in in fact a vegan, btw and she's the best cook (for a 20 year old) that I've ever met really. Being vegan isn't so bad, it can be expensive at tiem though.. I myself love cheese too much.

My dad is married to a woman who was once a vegan but ever since marrying my dad eats organic free range meat (on occaision). I myself don't see anything wrong with that kind of stuff in the context of animal rights/healthiness/good for the planet. Because lets face it, meat can be really sketchy. My friend worked in a ameat packing plant and the 1st thing he said after quitting was "stop eating meat".

I don't want this to turn into a debate, I just wanted to add to what i think is a pretty tasteful thread. (Although the title is misleading)
 
I would say the reason you gave is a good reason for the vegan not being hypocritical. If the vegan lives, he can stop more hamburgers from being eaten.

If the person is a serious vegan and an animal rights activist or something, it wouldn't be hypocritical because they would be benefitting their cause more by living. They could either eat one hamburger, and prevent ten more from being eaten, or they could not eat the hamburger, and let those ten be eaten. If the vegan really cares about saving animals, then it would be hypocritical not to eat the hamburger... or at least that's my take on it
 
I don't think that hypocrisy is necessarily just betraying what you believe, but is contingent on how much you profess to believe in it. Take the example given. With the circumstances described, there is no hypocrisy (or probably none) being committed because I doubt the subject was going around telling everyone that he/she would rather die than ever eat another piece of meat. The extenuating circumstances excuse the behavior because it was not in the vegan's character to do such a thing.

Extend the example a bit, though. OP stated that the vegan could prevent further hamburgers from being eaten through future activism. I don't think that just being vegan is a form of activism, but let's say this person is a full blown acitivist. They tell friends and family around them the evils of eating meat, start showing movies of cows being slaughtered to people standing in line at McDonald's, begin broad campaigns decrying specific vendors that sell meat, like that. But secretly our vegan remembers the taste of their lone hamburger and loved it. He/she goes home every night and fries up a tasty burger and enjoys every last greasy bit. That would be hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is dependent on a pretense or deception. A priest who touches little boys. Al Gore going home at night in his Hummer and shoveling coal in his fireplace. You get the idea. Look at a slightly different example. Let's say our vegan simply decided that eating meat was morally wrong and made a personal vow to not do it anymore. They didn't tell anyone that they should do it also, or even make a point to inform anyone they were doing it themselves. Every once in awhile, he/she slips and decides to have a burger, or a chicken wing. This is not hypocrisy, it is just someone trying to be a vegan, and occassionally failing.
 
It is hypocrisy, but I would say it is the correct decision for sure. What interests me about this topic is...how can you know how long you have to live without food? Can you really tell this is it, I am going to die RIGHT now if I do not eat...hmm
 
It wouldn't be hipocrisy. A human being needs to satisfy its needs for food, among other things, before moving on to beliefs, religion, whatever ideology (I think it includes veganism). So, if he can't stop starving, he shouldn't even be thinking about his ideology... imo that makes him not a hypocrite, as he just can't go against human nature.
 
I'm not really contributing anything to my own discussion with this post, but I feel it should be said because it helped a lot: Nowen, that was very clarifying for me; thanks much for that response.

CaptKirby said:
What interests me about this topic is...how can you know how long you have to live without food?
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It's an example in a vacuum -- it doesn't matter how they know how long they have to live, what's important is that they have the knowledge and can act on it.
 
The two major motivations for veganism are concern for animal rights or a desire for a healthier diet. Considering the former, the cow that produced the hamburger is already dead, so eating it won't cause any more animals to suffer than not doing so. If the decision involved sacrificing a living cow to produce the hamburger I suppose that could be considered hypocrisy in a narrow intellectual sense, but I certainly don't believe in a practical sense. Considering the latter, eating one hamburger is obviously "healthier" to choosing to die prematurely, so that really isn't an issue...
 
The question here is what level of value the man has asserted hamburgers have. The situation is absurd, but for the sake of the idea, I'll play along. The man believes that eating hamburgers is wrong. I'll assume that he has spoken to others about how wrong it is. The question of the matter is at what he valued the existance of a hamburger. Stuff like right and wrong isn't so black and white as the whole example shows, and of course, he values more than just hamburgers. Everyone, in their ethics, places different values on different things, and you are only being hypocritical if you betray the order you have created and asserted. It's the same thing as asserting that stealing is wrong and then forgiving someone for stealing food to avoid starvation when all else failed; you condemn stealing but to a lesser degree than you oppose death. If he stated that eating hamburgers is wrong because humans don't need to eat hamburgers but maintained that a human life was worth more than that of a hamburger, he is in the clear for eating the hamburger. If he declared that hamburgers are sacred above all else human life included, he would be a hypocrite and, in order to maintain his moral integrity, must die. If that sounds extreme and unreasonable, consider the unreasonable things that we are presuming to be true in the first place, and realize that if the situation were reworked into a more plausible moral dilemma that it would probably seem more reasonable.
 
IMO it wouldn't be hipocrisy because if he's acting to save his life than he shouldn't care about morals. People eat other humans to survive, so why can't a vegan eat a hamburger?
 
Well, hypocrisy in my books is when you actually have a decision to make and then make one which is against what you portray to the world. In this case, the vegan didn't show hypocrisy but he was actually just trying to survive.

If a vegan ate a hamburger where he wasn't doing it to save his life, I would've called that hypocrisy. Deep down inside, anyone would do anything to save their lives, its just how it is, people generally don't want to die. Even the people who do accept death very calmly wish to die in a peaceful manner, starvation has to be one of the worst ways to die. Imagine having to suffer for hours, seeing that burger in front of you, knowing that it'll save you from this torture, the guy is a human after all.

I've known people who've aged to that point where they aren't really afraid of death but are ready to embrace it. However, every single one of them wishes to pass away into the abyss in a calm way without any agony. They don't want to be in pain and agony before passing away but would rather just fall off to sleep and never wake up. If I'm given a choice of dying of starvation or screwing my principles, I'd probably take the second one. It isn't hypocrisy, its just saving one's life.
 
omnitarian said:
Most vegetarians/vegans operate under the belief that it's morally wrong to eat meat given the fact that modern human society can feed themselves without it. So there's plenty of room for exigent circumstances like this.
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Right.

And most vegans I know are vegans because they don't want to support the meat industry.

And I don't think it's fair to call someone a hypocrite, or that it even makes a difference, in such an extreme circumstance.
 
No... The Vegan has to survive and even though it'll be hard, he'll at least make a bigger difference when he's alive. And generally you get stuck between choosing your morals, or your life. Which in the end is worth more to you? =|

It's like being trapped in a cave for daaaaaaaaaaaays and no food, but your friend is succombing to the cold. They are going to die, but do you have to? Will you eat human flesh to survive?

I think that's more morally demanding and pushes people to a certain limit. (Btw, people have engaged in Canniblism in these kind of situations. I read it somewhere...).
 
omnitarian said:
Most vegetarians/vegans operate under the belief that it's morally wrong to eat meat given the fact that modern human society can feed themselves without it. So there's plenty of room for exigent circumstances like this.
Click to expand...

Haven't read too much of the topic, but this sums up my thoughts exactly. If they didn't have the choice between meat and being vegans in the first place they wouldn't have become vegans.
 
What you believe is morally right can be defined as what you believe to be the "least of all evils" in normal circumstances. However, there are of course instances where an alternative exists that is a lesser evil; like in your scenario. The vegan is only a hypocrit if he genuinely values his life less than the "saved" hamburger, but still eats it.
 
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