REVIEWS the Way of Compassion: Survival Strategies for A

REVIEWS The Way of Compassion: Survival Strategies for a World in Crisis Rowe, Martin, ed., New York: Stealth Technologies. 1999. viii + 244 pp. ISBN 0 9664056 0 9. $16.95 This is an inspirational book, rather than a scholarly one, though there are scholars in it. The volume consists of short essays by and interviews with well-known and lesser-known activists and thinkers in the elds of animal rights and environmentalism. It is essentially a single-volume expression of the ongoing work of Satya, a vegetarian and animal rights magazine which Rowe edits, published in New York City since 1994 and distributed free in public venues throughout the city. Among the more recognizable personalities included in this col- lection one nds South Asia scholar Chris Chapple, ecofeminist Carol Adams, African-American fruitarian and humorist Dick Gregory, veggie-rabbi Arthur Waskow, former rancher-turned-vegetarian (and Oprah Winfrey co-defendant) Howard Lyman, primatologist Jane Goodall, and animal rights activists Henry Spira and Maneka Gandhi. There are also contributions from “regular folks making a di Ú erence,” including people involved in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), AIDS activism, community gardens, animal protection, and other initiatives. The entries are mostly only a few pages each, giving a wide range of concise but powerful personal perspectives on important moral and ethical issues facing the global society of the twenty- rst century. In keeping with the spirit of Satya, the overriding themes in this book are animal rights and vegetarianism. Many of the essays deal with bridging the perceptive gap between animals and humans, to include the animal world within our realm of moral considerability. Other entries document the horrors of factory farming, the superior healthiness of a vegetarian/vegan/fruitarian diet, or the dangers of eating animal products (including Mad Cow Disease and others). There are also essays on the problems of (mal)development versus sustainability, bioethics and animal research, as well as personal accounts of direct action and activism. ©Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2000 Worldviews 4,179-181 180 reviews For the most part this book appears to be aimed at an audience of converts and sympathizers. One feels this is not necessarily a weak- ness, as long as it is acknowledged, and there are indications that it is. Much of the book’s content comes across as friendly advice for fellow activists, particularly reminders that one wins genuine converts not through coercion or moral high-handedness but rather through seeking common ground and living by example. “If you act like a criminal, you will be treated as one,” cautions Ben White. “[I]t is important to treat everyone—the police, your opponents, the press— as potential converts, and be persuasive rather than angry.” (220) Similarly, there are many candid testimonies (“how I became a vegan ...”) seemingly directed towards fence-sitting animal sympathizers. A few of the entries might be appropriate for purposes of educating the less-informed, especially Portland-based urban planner Philip GoÚ ’s highly lucid and deeply disturbing essay on “Car Culture and the Landscape of Subtraction,” which one wishes could be required reading as part of all new car and suburban home loan applications. A number of the articles on animal research, including xenotransplants, AIDS, and bio-patenting, update the lessons contained in Peter Singer’s indispensable 1975 primer Animal Liberation and oÚ er troubling information which cries out for public debate but is gen- erally suppressed by the mainstream media. A recurring theme is that making animals morally considerable is simply a logical exten- sion of the historical process that has granted considerability to diverse groups of human beings. Roger Fouts, the University of Oklahoma primatologist who became famous during the late 1970’s for teach- ing a chimpanzee sign language, predicts that “Just as our country is ashamed of what our ancestors have done to people who were considered to be di Ú erent from us, by exploiting them as slaves or children in our factories, so too someday will our children be ashamed of what we do today to our sibling species, the chimpanzee.” (194) Other, “support-group” style essays suggest strategies for practis- ing and defending vegetarianism and/or environmental or animal rights activism. To the perennial questions vegetarians are bombarded with, such as “What do you nd to eat?” or “Where do you get adequate nutrition?” Lawrence Carter-Long replies that while he has “never heard of any vegetarian dropping dead from malnutrition” it is not hard to see meat-eaters “dying of heart disease and cancer and obesity.” In response to accusations that animal rights activists.

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