Yesterday evening I've met some animal rights activists on the Königstrasse of Stuttgart. This one is a long and broad street reserved for pedestrian use. It's a little bit like the Vaci street of Budapest. However, unlike its Hungarian counterpart, the street itself is a little bit like some antique Agora instead of a bunch of poorly disguised attempts to rip off brain-dead tourists.
There are lots of people going along the street, and for this reason there are lots of other people standing behind tables and trying to convince the former about their cause. There is a table about Islam and there's one about solidarity with Israel. There are tables for and against the "controversial" (ie corrupt and completely useless) megaproject called Stuttgart21, right next to each other. But I don't want to write about S21 now.
Instead, I want to write about animal rights activism. Actually I have some sympathy with this. I really like animal rights. There is no excuse for raising animals in conditions which would make Auschwitz feel like a luxury hotel. Or raising them to produce garments which are not just totally obsolete, but totally expensive as well. Or bottom trawling, which is the maritime equivalent of clear-cutting a huge rainforest. So these are real issues which really need to be addressed...
Now there are some people who say the only ethical solution is going vegan. No milk, no cheese, no eggs just plants. Animals, as they say, are sentient beings and therefore we do not have the right to regard them as our own property. Here, like most people, I have to disagree. Sure they have a more or less developed nervous system, which makes them very capable to feel pain and frustration and loneliness. But one thing is still for sure: they never ever feel the lack of freedom. Considering that even humans are very often incapable to clearly understand this concept, we must assume that in the case of animals with exponentially fewer mental capacities, it goes much worse.
And do we actually treat animals in such a different way? For example, what's the difference between giving all your time to a stupid boss and giving milk or eggs to a farmer? Or between dying in a war as a drafted soldier and dying in a slaughterhouse as a cow? Okay, I'll tell you what's the difference: we actually know how pointless it is to do. Animals don't. Which means that our situation is even worse...
For this reason, veganism can only be a morally valid lifestyle if it's combined with uncompromising oldschool anarchism.
One might rightfully argue that the concept of intelligence is very far from being absolute, and therefore it cannot be measured impartially. For example, many consider the fascist Hungarian blogger Mr Tamas Polgar extremely intelligent because of the fact that he's able to write sophisticated computer programs. Still, I would never regard him as such. So if we cannot value intelligence impartially, we are neither allowed to enslave animals (or humans) on the pretext that they are "less intelligent" than us. There are many things which humans cannot do and other animals can.
So let us assume that we don't have the right to consider us the centre of the universe. But then, aren't we supposed to judge ourselves by the same measure as we judge other animals?
For example, cats! These little cuties kill their prey with a cruelty comparable to the worst factory farms of Mexico. If they are allowed to be cruel, then why are we humans not? That's just unfair! If we cannot say we're better than other species, we can neither say we're worse!
Or do we have to positively discriminate all kinds of predatory animals in the name of affirmative action? It's true that some of them have to hunt for prey, since their body is unable to feed on plants. But actually there are some species completely able to feed on plants, but still they hunt for prey. For example, the bear.
Of course we can still say that a bear cannot gather a diet of plants which are able to replace his meat. They cannot gather spinach. On the other hand, humans can.
But this argument has landed us on the field of morality. Morality is a great thing which actually tells our species apart from the whole biosphere, since there is no creature able to abstractly reason about morality except for the homo sapiens...
And there is no creature able to fly at a speed of 325 km/h except for the peregrine falcon, the anti-speciesist might say. Still, it's a moral decision to eat spinach instead of meat. Meat tastes good. It tastes good because it has a lot of valuable nutrients. That's why we have a taste which values meat more than spinach. But we can morally decide not to eat any meat, because it's wrong. There's no other animal able to make such a decision...
Or we can argue that it's right to kill animals, since God said we can, or since we can kill them without pain, or whatever. You see, morality is such a hazy and volatile thing. This is exactly the reason why most animals (and most humans, for that matter) tend not to think much about it. Animals are not very moral creatures. They do some right things - for example, they stop taking prey if they have enough, which is quite unlike human behaviour (see "Capitalism"). But if they have something tasty and something not tasty, or much harder to get, than they always choose the former.
But I might still say, vegans have a point. It's wrong to cause so much suffering for the animals. And if they would be raised as gracefully as possible, it would make the whole process so expensive that most people would actually turn vegan. There is of course a compromise, since we can spare them a lot of suffering and still keep the price reasonable. There is not really that much money to spare with all that cruelty going on in the industry.
They would still not live the life of their dreams, but then again, most humans do not live the life of their dreams either. (See the argument above!) We always have to do things which we don't want to do, and there's no point of doing it. For example, there's no point of doing wars, and there's few people who actually enjoy it. And there is no point of exploiting the working class. Sometimes they live almost as miserably as pigs in a factory farm. So I might say we should first liberate humans, and then we can move on to animals. Or we can do both of them at the same time, but still I think humans are a little bit more important.
There are lots of people going along the street, and for this reason there are lots of other people standing behind tables and trying to convince the former about their cause. There is a table about Islam and there's one about solidarity with Israel. There are tables for and against the "controversial" (ie corrupt and completely useless) megaproject called Stuttgart21, right next to each other. But I don't want to write about S21 now.
Instead, I want to write about animal rights activism. Actually I have some sympathy with this. I really like animal rights. There is no excuse for raising animals in conditions which would make Auschwitz feel like a luxury hotel. Or raising them to produce garments which are not just totally obsolete, but totally expensive as well. Or bottom trawling, which is the maritime equivalent of clear-cutting a huge rainforest. So these are real issues which really need to be addressed...
Now there are some people who say the only ethical solution is going vegan. No milk, no cheese, no eggs just plants. Animals, as they say, are sentient beings and therefore we do not have the right to regard them as our own property. Here, like most people, I have to disagree. Sure they have a more or less developed nervous system, which makes them very capable to feel pain and frustration and loneliness. But one thing is still for sure: they never ever feel the lack of freedom. Considering that even humans are very often incapable to clearly understand this concept, we must assume that in the case of animals with exponentially fewer mental capacities, it goes much worse.
And do we actually treat animals in such a different way? For example, what's the difference between giving all your time to a stupid boss and giving milk or eggs to a farmer? Or between dying in a war as a drafted soldier and dying in a slaughterhouse as a cow? Okay, I'll tell you what's the difference: we actually know how pointless it is to do. Animals don't. Which means that our situation is even worse...
For this reason, veganism can only be a morally valid lifestyle if it's combined with uncompromising oldschool anarchism.
One might rightfully argue that the concept of intelligence is very far from being absolute, and therefore it cannot be measured impartially. For example, many consider the fascist Hungarian blogger Mr Tamas Polgar extremely intelligent because of the fact that he's able to write sophisticated computer programs. Still, I would never regard him as such. So if we cannot value intelligence impartially, we are neither allowed to enslave animals (or humans) on the pretext that they are "less intelligent" than us. There are many things which humans cannot do and other animals can.
So let us assume that we don't have the right to consider us the centre of the universe. But then, aren't we supposed to judge ourselves by the same measure as we judge other animals?
For example, cats! These little cuties kill their prey with a cruelty comparable to the worst factory farms of Mexico. If they are allowed to be cruel, then why are we humans not? That's just unfair! If we cannot say we're better than other species, we can neither say we're worse!
Or do we have to positively discriminate all kinds of predatory animals in the name of affirmative action? It's true that some of them have to hunt for prey, since their body is unable to feed on plants. But actually there are some species completely able to feed on plants, but still they hunt for prey. For example, the bear.
Of course we can still say that a bear cannot gather a diet of plants which are able to replace his meat. They cannot gather spinach. On the other hand, humans can.
But this argument has landed us on the field of morality. Morality is a great thing which actually tells our species apart from the whole biosphere, since there is no creature able to abstractly reason about morality except for the homo sapiens...
And there is no creature able to fly at a speed of 325 km/h except for the peregrine falcon, the anti-speciesist might say. Still, it's a moral decision to eat spinach instead of meat. Meat tastes good. It tastes good because it has a lot of valuable nutrients. That's why we have a taste which values meat more than spinach. But we can morally decide not to eat any meat, because it's wrong. There's no other animal able to make such a decision...
Or we can argue that it's right to kill animals, since God said we can, or since we can kill them without pain, or whatever. You see, morality is such a hazy and volatile thing. This is exactly the reason why most animals (and most humans, for that matter) tend not to think much about it. Animals are not very moral creatures. They do some right things - for example, they stop taking prey if they have enough, which is quite unlike human behaviour (see "Capitalism"). But if they have something tasty and something not tasty, or much harder to get, than they always choose the former.
But I might still say, vegans have a point. It's wrong to cause so much suffering for the animals. And if they would be raised as gracefully as possible, it would make the whole process so expensive that most people would actually turn vegan. There is of course a compromise, since we can spare them a lot of suffering and still keep the price reasonable. There is not really that much money to spare with all that cruelty going on in the industry.
They would still not live the life of their dreams, but then again, most humans do not live the life of their dreams either. (See the argument above!) We always have to do things which we don't want to do, and there's no point of doing it. For example, there's no point of doing wars, and there's few people who actually enjoy it. And there is no point of exploiting the working class. Sometimes they live almost as miserably as pigs in a factory farm. So I might say we should first liberate humans, and then we can move on to animals. Or we can do both of them at the same time, but still I think humans are a little bit more important.
No comments:
Post a Comment