[HN Gopher] An Animal's Place (2002)
___________________________________________________________________
An Animal's Place (2002)
Author : cheese_goddess
Score : 65 points
Date : 2021-08-02 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (michaelpollan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (michaelpollan.com)
| sweetheart wrote:
| Pollan has a tendency to talk himself into pretty weird
| conclusions, namely that because we can treat an animal well and
| give it a good life, killing it and consuming it before it
| naturally dies is somehow good. There is this made up notion that
| the animal is almost a sacrifice for us: in exchange for a
| peaceful safe life, it gives us its blood and flesh.
|
| But remember, never willingly. It never wants to die. It can
| never agree to that trade. Killing an animal that does not want
| to die when we don't need to do it to survive is always wrong,
| whether or not you gave it safe a life. I can't raise my puppy up
| as a loving family member and then one day bludgeon it to death
| once I'm ready to consume (as is often done to pigs. See:
| "thumping").
|
| Pollan get so much right and the article is worth a read, but
| let's be clear about two things: killing an animal that doesn't
| want to die when we don't need to do it to survive is always
| wrong, and ridding this planet of factory farms and replacing
| them with the idyllic farms he mentions towards the end still
| requires a MASSIVE cultural shift away from the amount of animal
| products we consume. We can't meet current demand for animals
| products with those idyllic farms, so step one is massively
| reducing how many animals we consume. All vegans are saying is
| that we may as well shoot for as close to 0 as we can.
| Asooka wrote:
| I don't see how you can string together such a consistent
| argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for
| food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of
| killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as
| plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point
| about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there
| are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past
| cultures who did it. Western society has decided that the dog
| is a beloved companion, but a person who did not grow up
| indoctrinated to think that way would have no qualms about
| eating one, save for the fact that you get a lot less meat out
| of one than what you put in, plus the fact it can probably
| serve you better alive. You can see a similar parallel in
| people's attitudes to eating rats - some may be revolted at
| eating such a dirty animal (similar to how some cultures feel
| about pigs), some would be aghast at eating a beloved pet
| (similar to how you feel about dogs), and some wouldn't really
| mind it.
|
| At the end of the day, every living thing on this planet -
| every tree, every plant, every mushroom, every fish, every
| insect and every mammal dies and is eaten. I absolutely agree
| with you on the factory farms though - humanity should strive
| to not cause other creatures to suffer.
| haste410 wrote:
| > killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a
| tree.
|
| I don't know how you can make this argument. Does an apple
| tree feel pain, fear, or loss when it or another apple is
| plucked?
| jhbadger wrote:
| Not as much as an animal, but we are learning that plants
| are far more sophisticated than we've traditionally given
| them credit for, and do have ways to detect damage (which
| we call "pain" in animals) and can even alert other plants
| to danger (which could be called "fear")
| sweetheart wrote:
| The common retort to this argument ("plants feel pain
| too") is to imagine that you call the fire department
| because your home is burning down, and unfortunately your
| pet is still in the house. When the fire fighters arrive,
| you tell them hurriedly that your pet is inside and it
| needs to be saved. Without hesitation the firefighter
| plunged into the flames and emerges minutes later, but
| not holding your pet, but instead your aloe plant.
|
| You exclaim in a panic, Why didn't you save my pet!? To
| which the fire fighter says, Well plants feel pain too
| you know! And we're learning a lot more about how
| advanced they are and how they communicate.
|
| Do you really think you'd stand and their and consider,
| Hm that's a good point, there is no relevant difference
| between my pet being saved and my plant?
|
| No one who has ever made the argument that plants and
| animals deserves equal moral consideration due to this
| capacity to suffer has ever, ever meant it.
| shuntress wrote:
| Whether or not the plant "feels pain" (and therefor
| whether or not it is morally wrong to do nothing while it
| dies in a fire) is immaterial here. People are more
| likely to build and maintain emotional attachments to
| their pets rather than their plants because their pets
| exhibit behaviors that are easier to identify and
| personify.
|
| People want the fire fighters to prioritize saving
| whatever has the most value to them personally. That may
| happen to be house plants. Or perhaps photo albums. Or
| (likely most common) pets.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Okay then, let's consider an alternate scenario then.
|
| Let's say that you're a bystander at the fire, and you
| watch the firefighter rush into the flames. You walk up
| to your neighbor, whose house it is engulfed, and you
| ask, What are they going in for? Your puppy? to which
| your neighbor responds, Actually I have a really
| sentimental baseball glove that my dad gave me when I was
| a little kid. I couldn't imagine losing the glove, but
| the puppy I could take or leave.
|
| Would you understand the position, and agree that it's
| better to safe the glove because it has more value to the
| neighbor? Or would you be appalled that your neighbor is
| opting to let a sentient animal burn to death in order to
| save a baseball glove? Albeit, a very sentimental one.
| shuntress wrote:
| The better angle to take here would be to point out that
| taking an apple from an apple tree does not harm the tree.
| From the plant's point of view this is actually beneficial.
| It _wants_ animals to take away its seeds. So this is more
| alike to taking milk from a cow.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| As you state, plucking an apple for food is morally fine -
| few would disagree, and anyone who does is likely to get
| quite hungry quite quickly. Meanwhile, killing people for
| food is obviously wrong, yes? Morally abhorrent, in fact!
|
| But there's a spectrum between those two extremes. To set a
| boundary, you need to determine the reasons why one is
| acceptable and the other is not. Maybe you intuitively draw
| the line right next to the apple, eating plant life only - no
| fish, crustaceans, shellfish - or maybe you draw the line
| adjacent to humans, contentedly eating tool-using,
| communicative, emotional, social, familial, intelligent
| gorillas without feeling guilt.
|
| But what makes it abhorrent to eat a person, and acceptable
| to eat a plant? As Bentham wrote, Singer quoted, and the
| article cites, I would agree that it has something to do with
| the animal's capacity to suffer. One might add positive
| capacities for joy, or broader ecosystem health needs, or
| other questions of relative utility for the victim and the
| farmer, but the point remains: A pig is a remarkably human-
| like animal. Not as intelligent or as emotional as a human,
| perhaps, but it's far closer to a human than that shrink-
| wrapped package of hot dogs in the grocery aisle might lead
| you to believe.
|
| What qualities does a human have that a pig or dog does not?
| What metrics can you use to measure those qualities, and how
| do you set a threshold for where it becomes moral or immoral?
| Identify those, and you'll have a much more solid argument
| for why killing a pig is moral.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| This conversation triggered memories of hunting for my
| first time as a teenager: I shot a beautiful doe with a
| black powder rifle using iron sights.
|
| Observing the forest with my eyes and ears, waiting in
| still silence for hours in chemical and visual camouflage,
| lining up with its chest, making a slight sound to get it
| to pause... You feel a certain focused hunger as you gaze
| down the barrel, that you've never felt before. But the way
| it feels... It's something you know. Something that is
| deeply ingrained in you. The moment feels like forever, as
| you release a deadly projectile from your species'
| 'advanced technology'. Then, gutting it in the forest,
| dragging it out, hanging it up on the gambrel, cutting all
| the meat out, seasoning it, grilling it, and eating it...
|
| Probably the most powerful, self-realizing, humbling,
| spiritual experience I have ever had. For the first time in
| my life, I actually felt like an animal! _A real animal!_
|
| Did I have to kill that doe to survive? Absolutely not. I
| could have driven down the road to McDonalds and had a
| burger in my stomach in under 10 minutes.
|
| Once I found the doe on the ground, I sat with it for a
| couple minutes in silence. I felt very thankful for it. "My
| God! I just killed this thing!" (I'm agnostic.) There is a
| certain realization - that we are all simultaneously frail,
| and immensely powerful. In that moment, you feel your place
| in the hierarchy.
|
| I have a feeling that many among us today choose to
| actively fight this innate reality. People implicitly
| reject the concept that they are animals. They don't like
| the idea that they exist today because their ancestors
| killed things. Did things we now consider immoral. It can
| manifest in to a sort of self-hatred that is reflected on
| to others.
|
| "Why do we even eat meat today? It's not necessary."
| Absolutely true! But to that, I say, because I enjoy it,
| and because I can. No other support is needed. My species
| has clearly evolved to enjoy consuming it, and to devise
| technology to acquire it. Become comfortable with what you
| are made of, animal spirits and all.
|
| But above all, with great power, comes great
| responsibility. Hone your sense of morality, as we are in a
| position privileged to do so. Thanks for reading my
| rambling. :)
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > Probably the most powerful, self-realizing, humbling,
| spiritual experience I have ever had.
|
| I'm sorry, you felt it was self-realizing to kill an
| animal? What the hell? There's nothing sadder and messier
| and more harrowing than having to kill an animal and you
| actually found it a "spiritual experience" to kill one
| when you didn't even have to? What kind of culture do you
| come from? I can't think of anyone from the western world
| ("your species 'advanced technology'? Not a native
| hunter, then) that seriously thinks it's cool to kill.
|
| Actually, no, I can. Ugh.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| I feel like this comment accuses me of fetishizing
| killing, and that disgusts me.
|
| I had something long typed out, but it's just not worth
| it. When I (rarely) comment, I am usually reminded how
| debilitating it is. It's probably an indication that I
| should just stay silent, so I think I'll stick to that
| more.
|
| I'll try though: People eat meat their whole lives, but
| never feel the act of killing and consuming first-hand. I
| find that rather sad, like they have lived their life
| never emotionally acknowledging this innate drive that
| enabled their existence. If anything, the act forces upon
| you greater respect and compassion for life and what it
| means to be an animal.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > What qualities does a human have that a pig or dog does
| not?
|
| But... the quality that the human is human and the pig is a
| pig? What else? Why does this even need to be asked, I
| don't understand. Isn't it obvious?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > At the end of the day, every living thing on this planet -
| every tree, every plant, every mushroom, every fish, every
| insect and every mammal dies and is eaten.
|
| Except humans. Humans cremate their corpses.
|
| While we might get into a debate about whether some forms of
| life somewhere on Earth technically consume your scattered
| ashes, it's quite the distance from _hitting you on the head
| until you die and then chewing on your flesh._
| cercatrova wrote:
| Cremation is relatively recent in human history (oldest
| record dating to 17,000 years ago), the vast majority of
| which we buried our dead who then decomposed/were eaten.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| _Some_ cultures (some _nations_ ) cremate their dead.
| Others bury them. Some bury them in the soil, where they
| are eaten by soil organisms, some bury them in the sea
| where they are eaten by fish and some bury them in the air,
| where they are consumed by scavenging birds:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence
|
| Relatedly, animals still kill many humans every year:
|
| > Philadelphia, February 28, 2018 -- A new study released
| in the latest issue of Wilderness & Environmental Medicine
| shows that animal encounters remain a considerable cause of
| human harm and death. Researchers analyzed fatalities in
| the United States from venomous and nonvenomous animals
| from 2008-2015. They found that while many deaths from
| animal encounters are potentially avoidable, mortality
| rates did not decrease from 2008-2015. The animals most
| commonly responsible for human fatalities are farm animals,
| insects (hornets, wasps, and bees), and dogs.
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180228112528.
| h...
|
| Though most of the humans killed this way are not even
| eaten, which is arguably a waste. One reason is that many
| of the killer animals are herbivores, particularly cows:
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cows-
| officia...
| meristohm wrote:
| I prefer for my body to be eaten by other living things,
| big or small, and ideally in a way that doesn't pollute the
| land and water too much (I accept the heavy metals and
| other toxins I have built up over the years will leech one
| way or another). I have no problem separating the dead body
| from the previously-living being, and I hope more people
| can adopt this view. This doesn't mean I will stop handling
| dead bodies respectfully, at least as far as I see it. When
| I kill a fly or an ant I own the act, matter-of-fact
| without performative solemnity, and put the body in the
| compost to fuel further life. When I ask the vet to kill my
| dog I will be sad as this family member dies in my hands,
| and eventually the dominant emotion will be love and joy at
| all the good times we had together.
| shuntress wrote:
| I would assume based on your comment that you're already
| aware of these [0] but if not, consider reading up on
| "Towers of Silence". It may interest you.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > But remember, never willingly. It never wants to die.
|
| In what context does an animal die when it wants to die? When
| do animals want to die? And how would you know what an animal
| wants?
|
| Btw, I remember your username. The last time I communicated
| with your account, a person behind it threatened me with
| violence:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534682
|
| I will give your account the benefit of the doubt that this
| will not be repeated.
| jbotz wrote:
| It's not so simple as all that.
|
| We raise chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese completely free
| range. Our homestead doesn't really even have fence on all
| sides and most of it is virgin forest. All these sepecies can
| survive on their own in the forest here, although not in the
| same population density that they have on our homestead. We
| feed them, we take care of them when they are sick, and we
| provide some protection from predators... we also have dogs,
| and the dogs presence alone helps quite a bit with that. We
| also take some of their eggs, and sometimes we kill some of
| them. The birds know all of this, yet they stay, because life
| is better here than in the forest. Actually, some of the ducks
| (Moscovy ducks, they are fully native here) do leave, but they
| do so mostly when there are too many males and they end up
| fighting a lot.
|
| The bottom line to me is this... we keep the birds for eggs and
| fertilizer (and because we like them), we really eat very
| little meat, but we have to manage the population. When we let
| it get too big they suffer more, there's more disease, more
| fighting, etc. In fact, sometimes when the population has
| gotten rather dense, there has been murder and infanticide
| among them! They can't solve the population problem non-
| violently on their own, but they do like the benefits of food
| and safety, so we have to solve the population problem for
| them. I'm not rationalizing, I love these animals and don't
| like killing them, and I have gone long stretches of time
| without eating any meat and don't mind that. But I kill them,
| because when the time comes it's the right thing to do, and
| after I kill some I eat them because that's also the right
| thing to do, not because I _want_ to eat meat.
|
| So you might say: well then don't keep animals! Maybe, but
| keeping them is the most ecological way to maintain the soil
| fertility around our homestead (poor tropical soils) and the
| food we can produce because of this reduces our overall
| ecological footprint. I think it's a win-win for us, the
| animals, and the planet.
| sweetheart wrote:
| You're talking about justifying killing these animals to
| solve problems that are caused by farming the animals to
| begin with, which you even say yourself.
|
| I can't say anything about maintaining soil fertility because
| I know nothing about it, but what is about chickens that
| preserves the soil, and why can it only come from those
| chickens?
|
| Something about nutrients in the soil I imagine, right?
| jbotz wrote:
| Since we plant things that we eat and sell (or give away)
| we are removing nutrients from the soil. Someone has to put
| them back. We could do that with industrial NPK fertilizer,
| but that's not very ecological. Chicken manure is a more
| complete and natural fertilizer, and for the most part the
| chickens even spread it around for us. They also engage in
| some pest control (the ducks are especially good at that,
| without them we'd have a problem with some foreign snails
| that have invaded around here).
|
| We're not really "farming" the animals. We're more co-
| habitating with them. The birds and humans here are part of
| a society, an ecosystem that needs both and in which humans
| play a role of both caretakers and occasionally predators.
| Predators are necessary in a natural system and what we're
| trying to do is to imitate nature as best we can. This all
| may sound a bit pretentious, but, like I said, the birds
| are actually free to leave, and generally they don't, so it
| would seem they agree. In fact, a couple of times wild
| ducks have even voluntarily joined our little society!
|
| Also, I'm not trying to "justify" anything. What we're
| trying to do here is a live a bit closer to nature than
| people generally do, reduce our ecological footprint a bit,
| and treat nature and all life with a bit more respect. And
| what we've found is that you can't be close to nature
| without facing death in various forms every day.
|
| So ultimately, I don't think that Pollan's conclusion is
| "weird" and I don't think that "killing an animal ... is
| always wrong". I think treating nature with respect and
| letting sentient beings live their life in a way that
| respects their nature is more important than simply "not
| killing".
| sweetheart wrote:
| > I think treating nature with respect and letting
| sentient beings live their life in a way that respects
| their nature is more important than simply "not killing".
|
| But isn't the best way to respect these animals is to
| avoid killing them when we don't need to in order to
| survive? I've talked to so, so many people who keep
| animals and ultimately kill them that talk about this
| reverence for the natural world, and they talk about how
| death is an intrinsic part of that natural world.
|
| Sure, that's true, but that doesn't mean we need to
| contribute to that death (and suffering, naturally), when
| it doesn't need to take place. Will there always be
| gruesome, painful deaths? Of course. Will there always be
| animals that eat other animals? Definitely. But that
| doesn't mean it's totally fine for us to decide when
| animal lives or dies. An animal that has made no deals
| with you, has not agreed to any sort of symbiotic
| relationship which ends in it's death in order to feed
| you. Sure, the animals are treated well, and sure the
| birds at least can decide to leave, but them deciding not
| to doesn't mean they are agreeing to get slaughtered.
|
| > and I don't think that "killing an animal ... is always
| wrong"
|
| You left out the most important part of what I said in
| that quote, and mischaracterized it. I don't think it's
| always wrong to kill an animal. I said its always wrong
| to kill an animal when we don't need to do it in order to
| survive. That last part is really, really important.
|
| At the end of the day, I'm not saying you don't care
| about animals, or want to live in harmony with them. You
| do, and I do as well. All I'm trying to do is get you to
| consider that maybe we can do that and also understand
| that animals don't want to die for us, and they don't
| need to. That's it. You want to live closer to nature?
| Hell yeah, that's great. You provide a safe place for
| animals to live and prosper and enjoy life? Amazing, I'm
| so in support of you for doing that. But then let's
| continue that respect and peace by deciding to simply not
| kill the animal.
|
| > I think treating nature with respect and letting
| sentient beings live their life in a way that respects
| their nature is more important than simply "not killing".
|
| In situations that are not life and death, i.e. you are
| not in a sitation in which you must kill one of these
| animals in order to survive, how are "treating nature
| with respect and letting sentient beings live their life
| in a way that respects their nature" and not killing them
| not the same exact thing?
| jbotz wrote:
| Because if I don't control the population things will get
| ugly... overpopulation will bring disease and conflict
| and much greater suffering than killing. I try to control
| the population first by taking eggs, but the hens get
| very unhappy if I take all eggs, so we always leave 3 or
| 4. That's enough for the population to climb pretty
| quickly.
|
| Also I don't know that your "killing only when necessary
| for survival" is really a tenable argument. When exactly
| is it necessary for my survival? When there's a deadly
| pit-viper in the house, should I kill it for my survival?
| For our dogs survival (they are at greater risk because
| they think its their job to attack the snake)? I
| generally don't kill it, I capture the snake alive and
| take it away, at not inconsiderable risk to my life. I
| think that killing to maintain a well-functioning
| ecosystem is more ethical than a somewhat vague "killing
| to survive".
| sweetheart wrote:
| Well yeah, again, I think what I'm saying then is that
| the solution is to not use animals to achieve your goals.
| If you need to kill animals to ensure the optimal amount
| of them on your property then that doesn't sound like
| you're really living that close to nature. You're trying
| to maintain the animals in a state of disequilibrium.
|
| And yeah, we basically never need to kill animals to
| survive. Situations in which that is the case are
| extremely rare.
| rewq4321 wrote:
| This documentary is worth watching:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko (Dominion, released
| in 2018, unfortunately requires signing into youtube due to age
| retrictions)
| yboris wrote:
| My favorite documentary is _Earthlings_
|
| http://www.nationearth.com/
| m12k wrote:
| Nature doesn't deal in morality, right or wrong. Nature deals in
| balance. A fox that kills all the rabbits one year will die of
| hunger the next. The question isn't whether the fox has a moral
| right to kill rabbits or not, the question is whether the fox
| maintains the balance needed to maintain the ecosystem that it is
| part of. Act too unsustainably and break the balance by too much,
| and you disrupt the ecosystem, and your place within it.
|
| What we need to do isn't to anthropomorphize animals and project
| our morality onto them. What we need to do is acknowledge our
| place in the ecosystem and start acting like an omnivore that
| knows how to maintain balance instead of taking a saw to the
| branch we're sitting on.
| yboris wrote:
| _Rubbish_. By this logic, we can just say that we shouldn 't
| upset the "balance" of the slave owners -- they were able to to
| "maintain the balance needed to maintain the ecosystem that it
| is a part of".
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| Slaves were (are!) humans. Slavery has nothing to do with
| killing or not killing non-human animals, because it doesn't
| affect non-human animals, it affects other humans.
|
| There is just no sensible comparison that can be drawn
| between what we do to other animals and what we do to other
| humans and once more I'm struck by the surrealism of the
| positions taken in this kind of conversation. It's as if the
| obvious has to be stated at every turn: non-human animals are
| not human. Humans are human. We live in a civilisation built
| by humans, for humans, that only makes any sense (in asmuch
| as it does) to humans, not to other animals and it makes no
| sense to try and treat non-human animals as humans, any more
| than it makes sense to try and treat humans as non-human
| animals.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| _Attention: Downvoting me? You should respond instead or at
| least additionally. I don 't care if my points go to 0. Don't
| turn this place into a Reddit hivemind._
|
| This appears to be your logic: It's OK if we destroy our
| planet with global warming and create conditions where a good
| percentage of humanity could be harmed because portions of
| humanity have previously created harm and exploited others
| throughout history.
|
| This seems like "two wrongs make a right". The end result
| won't be a right.
| m12k wrote:
| Um, no. Humans do have morality, and can and should apply it
| to one another - and can expect and even demand the same in
| return from others. We can't do that with nature, and nature
| does not need or want that in return from us.
|
| Humans are both animals, that need to fit into an ecosystem,
| and social creatures, that need to fit into a society. Both
| domains require rules for how we interact with and fit into
| them, but those rules are not the same.
| troyvit wrote:
| I think the only flaw there is that our morality came from
| nature and therefore is one of the things we use to fit
| into our ecosystem. There's nothing to say we shouldn't
| apply it to other members of the system. If nature didn't
| "want" that we wouldn't be capable of doing it.
|
| Given how far up the food chain we are it could be argued
| that our morality exists precisely for this purpose.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| So are you saying humans are super-natural?
| m12k wrote:
| What on earth makes you think that? No, I don't think
| humans are super-natural. But in addition to being
| creatures sprung from nature, we are also something else
| (indeed, the very definition of something being anything
| other than natural, i.e. cultural or artificial, is that
| humans have had a hand in its creation).
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > in addition to being creatures sprung from nature, we
| are also something else
|
| Super-natural: More than natural. You are literally
| saying humans are supernatural (using the Latin prefix
| 'super-' meaning "in addition to" [1]).
|
| [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/super#Latin
| user-the-name wrote:
| No.
|
| We are unique in that we have the ability to develop morality.
| We will not throw that gift aside just because the rest of
| nature can not.
|
| We can and we should judge our actions by our morality. And
| nature itself is not exempt from judgement by that morality. It
| is entirely valid to ask ourselves if nature itself is morally
| wrong.
|
| It is not a stretch to make an argument that it is, in fact,
| not. Nature is built around massive, unending cruelty. Just
| because it has existed for a long time, or because we can out
| of that chaos, is no reason to accept it as a given.
| anthony_d wrote:
| We have the ability to develop _a_ morality. There are
| infinite possible variations.
|
| Being human means we judge ourselves and others. You should
| expect to be judged as well.
|
| If your sense of morality includes a sense of superiority or
| an entitlement to enforce your will on others, you can expect
| to be judged poorly.
| user-the-name wrote:
| I really don't know what to make of this.
|
| Any at all useful morality would include things like
| "killing people is wrong", and ways to enforce this.
|
| This is not really something people "judge poorly", it is
| the very basis of a functioning society.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > We have the ability to develop _a_ morality. There are
| infinite possible variations.
|
| And some of them are better than others.
| andersonbd1 wrote:
| Try "The difference of man and the difference it makes", by
| Mortimer J. Adler
| adriand wrote:
| Of the arguments Pollan presents for why it's okay to kill
| animals for food, the most persuasive is that domesticated
| animals evolved in symbiosis with humans -- that they essentially
| made a deal with humans whereby we would take care of them in
| exchange for their "products" and their lives:
|
| "[...] domestication happened when a small handful of especially
| opportunistic species discovered through Darwinian trial and
| error that they were more likely to survive and prosper in an
| alliance with humans than on their own. Humans provided the
| animals with food and protection, in exchange for which the
| animals provided the humans their milk and eggs and-yes-their
| flesh."
|
| The problem with this argument is two-fold. First, only one party
| in this "deal" has a full understanding of what the deal consists
| of and the endless cruelties and indignities inherent in it.
| Second, the terms of the "deal" have changed tremendously for
| _both_ parties since it was first "signed" (that is, when humans
| and animals first entered into the symbiotic relationship of
| domestication).
|
| The way in which the terms are different for animals is obvious
| (e.g. CAFOs), but the terms for humans have also changed
| tremendously, including in the past 20 years since the article
| was written. An Impossible Burger is so similar to a beef burger
| that when I first tried one, I thought perhaps the restaurant had
| screwed up my order and given me beef accidentally. It is, for
| almost all intents and purposes, meat: with the exceptions that
| eating it doesn't serve the interests of the cruel and planet-
| destroying agriculture business, and it doesn't involve taking
| the life of an animal. (His argument that ruminants are
| ecologically beneficial is also very outdated; raising cows in
| particular is a major environmental problem.)
|
| What this means is that it's increasingly difficult to claim that
| eating meat is anything _other_ than a gastronomic preference.
| There is no _need_ for it, but if we feel we must, we have
| "meat" that doesn't come from animals with which to satisfy that
| desire. He writes,
|
| '[...] we should at least acknowledge that our desire to eat meat
| is not a trivial matter, no mere "gastronomic preference." We
| might as well call sex-also now technically unnecessary-a mere
| "recreational preference." Whatever else it is, our meat eating
| is something very deep indeed.'
|
| Just like birth controls means we can have sex without
| procreating, plant-based meat allows us to eat meat without
| killing. If we wish to satisfy the "deep" desire to kill and eat
| animals (I find this silly -- scarfing down a burger is hardly a
| spiritual or evocative practice), we can.
|
| The world has changed: the terms for the "deal" we made with
| domesticated animals are no longer relevant and ought to be
| renegotiated.
| anthony_d wrote:
| There's a problem with these conversations about eating animals
| that is frequently hard to articulate. I think it's related to
| the famous quote:
|
| "You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason
| himself into in the first place."
|
| - Jonathan Swift?
|
| The argument against is detailed and seems logically
| consistent. Most people who are in favor of eating animals
| simply won't engage though. Those that do engage generally make
| a poor showing.
|
| My theory is morality isn't logical so arguing morality is
| simply a lack of self awareness. People who share your morality
| follow the logic and possibly change behavior, but without a
| shared sense of morality the argument is just a collection of
| empty words on par with a solved sudoku puzzle.
|
| Of course morality can and does change with time, just not via
| a logic based argument.
| simiones wrote:
| To me the main argument around the morality of killing animals
| for food has to do with the natural life cycle. You absolutely
| can have a self-consistent position that killing animals for
| food is morally evil, but only if you also consider all
| carnivores as morally evil. I believe Hinduism for example
| holds this position.
|
| But I don't think you can consider a human killing a lamb
| morally evil while thinking that a tiger doing the same is
| morally neutral.
|
| I'd also note, as I have elsewhere, that the way we sacrifice
| animals is much, much nicer than how they usually die in
| nature.
|
| Unfortunately, the way we raise animals is often incredibly
| cruel, much worse than necessary and much worse than we
| generally used to do it historically. I feel this is mostly the
| same as other horrible practices that savage capitalism has
| brought and that will hopefully end one way or another because
| of global warming.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Applying questions of the morality of eating meat to obligate
| carnivores makes no sense; there can be no moral question if
| there isn't an option between two paths. Obligate carnivores
| MUST eat meat, so whether or not they "should" makes no sense
| to ask.
|
| Humans are not obligate carnivores, though, which is morally
| relevant. We can hold human beings to a standard (don't eat
| animals if you can avoid it) but not carnivores to the same
| specifically because we have a choice and they do not.
| simiones wrote:
| Usually, killing another being in order for you to survive
| (outside of self-defense) is not considered morally right.
|
| Either way, even by your logic, tigers may be morally
| neutral, but bears or wolves should still be considered
| evil.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Well the first part of what you said seems just
| completely untrue. I don't think if someone was starving
| and they needed to eat an animal to survive that anyone
| would say they acted immorally.
|
| As to your second point: no. Those animals lack the moral
| reasoning ability to make a choice between eating meat
| and not eating meat. We don't, though.
|
| If I ever meat a bear who is able to make nuanced moral
| considerations like the ethics of eating meat, and who
| has access to a plant based diet on which they can
| survive, then sure I'll hold them to the same standard as
| you and me.
|
| I don't think Im ever going to meet a bear like that
| though.
| jbotz wrote:
| What about if someone were starving and they needed to
| eat a human to survive? (Because there wasn't anything
| else, shipwreck, etc)
|
| You're trying to apply the same standards to animals as
| to humans with respect to killing them being morally
| wrong, but then you make an exception that seems to place
| humans into a completely different category again. I
| don't like your exception because things are basically
| never that clear-cut... there's always another way. If
| you want to be so absolute about the morality of killing,
| then stick to it and don't make exceptions. If you don't
| want to consider animals as food, then don't consider
| them food, even if it means starving to death. Just as I
| don't think I would ever consider another human as food,
| even if I'm starving to death.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > Those animals lack the moral reasoning ability to make
| a choice between eating meat and not eating meat.
|
| But how can you say that? You can't know what choices an
| animal makes or doesn't make. In fact, if you have pets
| or been around animals for some time, it would be
| blindingly obvious that animals absolutely make choices
| between whether to eat something or not, be it meat or
| anything else.
|
| For example, the cats in the farm where I live have no
| compunction about eating humans' food (for example, one
| of my cheeses that I foolishly left within their reach),
| but the dogs will never touch it.
|
| Your caricature of animals as unthinking feeding machines
| is unrealistic and it is not based on any close contact
| or detailed knowledge of animals. Please re-examine your
| beliefs because they are unfounded and uninformed.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > Humans are not obligate carnivores, though, which is
| morally relevant.
|
| Obligate carnivores are not the only kinds of animals that
| eat meat. In fact most animals that eat meat are not
| obligate carnivores:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesocarnivore
|
| Many animals who eat meat are not even what you'd normally
| describe as "predators", for example chimpanzeese eat meat,
| sometimes hunted, sometimes foraged or scavenged:
|
| > While the chimpanzee is mostly herbivorous, it does eat
| honey, soil, insects, birds and their eggs, and small to
| medium-sized mammals, including other primates.[53][56]
| Insect species consumed include the weaver ant Oecophylla
| longinoda, Macrotermes termites and honey bees.[57][58] The
| western red colobus ranks at the top of preferred mammal
| prey. Other mammalian prey include red-tailed monkeys,
| infant and juvenile yellow baboons, bush babies, blue
| duikers, bushbucks, and common warthogs.[59]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee#Diet
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > First, only one party in this "deal" has a full understanding
| of what the deal consists of and the endless cruelties and
| indignities inherent in it.
|
| These "endless cruelties and indignities" exist in one way of
| farming only, the factory farms found in modern industrialised
| nations and spreading slowly like a rot throughout the world as
| we speak because capitalilsm is a disease that we don't know
| how to cure, like cancer.
|
| But for most of our history, there were no "endless cruelties
| and indignities inherent" in farming, as there aren't any still
| in much of the world today.
|
| Below are a few examples.
|
| Goat farming in Chavignol (to make Crottin de Chavignol AOP):
|
| https://youtu.be/WPeasWmx1og?t=157
|
| Goat farming in Corsica from a maker of Brocciou (pronounced
| broo-CHOO):
|
| https://youtu.be/EftGyQXyDlo
|
| Cow farming in the France region of Jura (to make Comte, AOP):
|
| https://youtu.be/U0D_a_o9wcQ?t=100
|
| Cow farming in Normandy (to make Camembert de Normandie, AOP):
|
| https://youtu.be/0by1csFhtQg
|
| Goat farming in the Greek Cyclades islands:
|
| https://youtu.be/L6g0xn5TLtE?t=48
|
| Sheep farming in the Greek island of Lesvos:
|
| https://youtu.be/kRptFUO_uzM
|
| Sheep farming in Transylvania:
|
| https://youtu.be/Bcuaf_y_TWg?t=9
|
| Those are from European countries that I'm more familiar with
| but you can find similar practices in most of the world,
| although they constantly at risk from large agribusinesses that
| want to take over the farmers land and business.
|
| More importantly, we have only been able to domesticate the
| animals we have because of their character and because of our
| character, and while there was no formal agreement, because a
| formal agreement can only be made between humans (because it
| needs language that only humans posses) it is very wrong to say
| that animals entered their contract with ours unwillingly. We
| have only been able to domesticate animals that allowed
| themselves to be domesticated: we have not domesticated zebras,
| for example, or tigers, or hippos. And we have only been able
| to domesticate animals because we ourselves, like our
| domesticated animals, are a gregarious, sociable species, that
| is kindly disposed towards other kinds of animals and has a
| natural instinct to care for them and tend to their needs. A
| lion could not domesticate sheep: it would just slaugther the
| entire herd. A weasel could not domesticate chickens: it would
| just strangle the entire flock. We were able to do it because
| we are, by our nature, as a specias, capable of caring for
| other beings than ourselves, even for beings of another species
| than ourselves. Which I think is most clearly seen in ideas
| like "animal liberation", albeit taken to extremens.
|
| > Second, the terms of the "deal" have changed tremendously for
| both parties since it was first "signed" (that is, when humans
| and animals first entered into the symbiotic relationship of
| domestication).
|
| This is true. Absolutely, 100%, heart-breakingly,
| infuriatingly, shamefuly true. But again this is because of the
| modern practices of factory farming that threaten to destroy
| our bond with our domesticated animals, this "mutualism" that
| Michael Pollan speaks of. Rather, to dig deeper still, the name
| of the culprit is _capitalism_ and it 's the result of the
| extreme distortions that it causes to the very mechanisms that
| sustain life on the planet, themselves. That is where the shame
| and the crime and the horror come from: capitalilsm. And the
| sooner we realise the mess we're in because of this inhuman
| economy we have created, the better we'll all be.
| Unfortunately, before this happens, everything we have achieved
| as a civilisation and as a species will be destroyed.
|
| Sorry for the rant.
| yboris wrote:
| Peter Singer's _Animal Liberation_ (1975) is a must-read book.
| Almost 50 years since its publication, it 's still relevant -
| provides a solid argument in favor of reducing one's meat
| consumption.
| Slade1 wrote:
| This is my opinion and it's definitely not steadfast set in
| stone: while I think people who don't consume meat are
| potentially more morally virtuous than omnivores, I don't think
| it is a moral obligation not to consume meat. I think there is
| much to be desired in terms of changes to mass farming practices,
| but the fundamentals of my beliefs are that we are not in the
| same moral and social contracts with animals as we are with other
| people. There are significantly different ramifications for
| squashing a bug, a dog, and a person (for example, but not as
| rationale). Is a pig, cow, chicken, or ANY given sentient
| creature able to comprehend and abide by the rules of morality we
| enforce on each other? Does a bear think about the moral
| ramifications of mailing a hiker? If a creature can demonstrate
| this an a willingness to abide by our morality, it should be
| brought into the fold of our social contracts and be given rights
| on par with humans. This doesn't mean it is morally justified to
| 'needlessly' kill or 'uncessesarily' reduce the well being of
| animals (what is needless or unnecessary are highly contextual
| and loose terms). Torturing of animals is a pretty clear example
| of something unnecessarily harmful and immoral without clear
| benefit. Ideally, animals unable to abide by moral codes are
| still granted certain minimal rights and protections, but are not
| privy to the set of rights and protections we grant each other.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| You mean "mauling a hiker" right?
|
| I agree with your comment and others have made that point:
| animals don't have any concept of rights, or wrongs, or duties,
| which can only be understood, and bestowed upon animals by
| humans. There are rights recognised to humans, like the right
| to own property or the right to vote in democratic societies,
| that animals would not be capable of exercising even if we
| granted them those rights and that alone makes absurd the idea
| of granting rights to animals modelled after the rights of
| humans. And even the basic rights, like the right to life, that
| it would make sense to grant animals, are not anything that
| animals themselves would be able to understand, or uphold, and
| they would immediately violate those rights by killing other
| animals, as cats will kill birds and small mammals without any
| consideration of their "rights" or any kinds of wrongs.
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