Putting The Cruel Into Cruelty

I say this as a confirmed meat-eater, but I'm pretty certain that when people look back on our era from 150-200 years in the future, they're going to find the widespread habit of consuming the seared flesh of mammals raised for the slaughter to have been a bizarre and barbaric practice. Thus, I've been reading with interest some posts kicking around on the subject of animal cruelty laws.

The conversation's been noteworthy for mostly playing out on libertarian blogs, which has, I think, closed off some possible avenues of conversation. It seems to me, for example, that one main reason we forbid cruelty to animals isn't because we're against cruelty to animals but because we want to discourage cruelty. If your friend liked to lobsters for fun, you'd worry. And not just for the sake of the lobster (I don't think arthropods have real nervous systems) but because people who get their jollies from torture seem dangerous. You'd worry more if he was torturing mice, and even more if he was torturing chimps. Maybe this is why we tend to come down much harder on cruelty per se -- hurting animals for the sake of hurting them -- than we do for instrumental meanness, subjecting them to bad conditions for the sake of making meat cheaper at the supermarket.

I don't think that line of reasoning works on libertarian terms, but since most people don't adhere to lunatic fringe ideologies, that's probably what's motivated a lot of people.

Comments

150-200 years from now, Soylent Green will be the most-consumed protein source.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | August 27, 2007 3:42 PM

This is why, as a confirmed meat eater, I try to stick to the cruelty-free variants. It's pretty easy to do, actually: there are a lot of sources where the animals don't live desperately unpleasant lives before we eat them (nothing immoral about killing animals for food, in my mind, but torturing them is alien -- and meat protein probably helped jump start civilization, so it has that going for it...). Corporate farming (such as the giant hog farms) are the worst; not buying their stuff is good for preventing random cruelty, but also good for not supporting the type of work environment generally exploitive of low wage workers and immigrants, too.

Posted by IP Guy | August 27, 2007 3:42 PM

In 150 years, we'll be arguing over whether it's animal cruelty to intentionally create "pain" signals in a computer-emulated mammallian nervous system.

Posted by Senescent | August 27, 2007 3:49 PM

And not just for the sake of the lobster (I don't think arthropods have real nervous systems)

Uh, yes they do. Many neuroscience labs use lobsters in their experiments.

Unless by "real", if you mean "human-like", then no.

Posted by mitch | August 27, 2007 3:49 PM

OK, we get this post, and we get the off-season basketball posts. When do we get the Michael Vick post?

Posted by Fred | August 27, 2007 3:50 PM

I think we can make reasonable inferences about the amount of pain that animals experience, based on the complexity of their nervous systems and their behavior. We can never be certain how good those inferences are. At the same time, we can never be certain that other people experience pain either.

At any rate, my opposition to cruelty to animals is partly because sadists are scary, but is more just the desire to avoid suffering in animals.

There are lots of people out there, though, for whom insouciance in the face of suffering is a sign of maturity or manliness.

Posted by Jim W | August 27, 2007 3:55 PM

Tying this in with Vick, lots of people have pointed out lots of athletes who beat up people -- wives and girlfriends particularly -- but we get more worked up over Vick's cruelty to animals. Why? The best answer I can think of is that sometimes people have it coming.

Posted by CJColucci | August 27, 2007 3:56 PM

when people look back on our era from 150-200 years in the future, they're going to find the widespread habit of consuming the seared flesh of mammals raised for the slaughter to have been a bizarre and barbaric practice.

What is your basis for this opinion? People have been eating meat for as long as there have been people, and there have been domesticated mammals for almost as long. Short of a global mad cow disease outbreak, there is no reason whatsoever to believe the practice of eating meat will decline in popularity.

Posted by Homer | August 27, 2007 3:57 PM

Maybe this is why we tend to come down much harder on cruelty per se -- hurting animals for the sake of hurting them

Noting, this doesn't apply just to animals. We, for instance, have generally outlawed cruel treatment of prisoners by the state while allowing the death penalty. Of course, that distinction has taken quite a beating over the past few years, but still.

Posted by Glenn | August 27, 2007 4:00 PM

Homer, he is, I think, talking about how domesticated animals are treated and fed. It is a very bizarre time right now. The reason people domesticated food animals was to convert stuff people don't eat, like bugs and grass to chickens and cows. Now we feed them food people can eat, in incredibly cruel environments.

See Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma
for the different ways meat can make its way to the table.

And, Matt, I think you're wrong about the lobster. Ever cooked one yourself?

Posted by jayackroyd | August 27, 2007 4:01 PM

Dick Cheney goes on canned hunts. Michael Vick should make an appearance on Fox News and explain his side of the story and voice his support for the surge. He might get the Libby treatment.

Posted by peter | August 27, 2007 4:03 PM

Did you really just call libertarianism a "lunatic fringe ideology"?

You are, of course, free to disagree with libertarians on any given issue, but isn't this going at little too far - simplistic and childish name-calling even?

Posted by Marc | August 27, 2007 4:04 PM

I think the endorphin rush from taking potshots at libertarians is clouding your thinking a bit, Ygz. The badness of the disposition--hell, even the descriptive identification of the description--depends largely on the badness of the act. Not that we wouldn't worry about someone who took a weird destructive pleasure in stabbing turnips, or indeed, that we don't worry about people who seem a little too enthusiastic about really bloodthirsty video-games. But what we're worried about there is that this might be a symptom of someone disposed to practice *actual* (as opposed to simulated) cruelty. Obviously, there's an element of that here: "If little Timmy treats the puppy that way, what might he do to people?" But I don't think it explains most of our horror at animal cruelty. I think a more important source of our differential reactions to dogfighting and factory farming is just that we can avoid thinking about what exactly goes into getting the steak on a plate, whereas in bloodsport the cruelty is front and center.

Posted by Julian Sanchez | August 27, 2007 4:04 PM

The Michael Vick case reminds me of the movie Fresh I saw back in the early 90's. I remember my stomach turning at the dogfighting scenes and the scene where the 12 year old main character, the eponymous "Fresh", casually hangs his pet pitbull and then shoots her.

Critics praised the movie at the time, but didn't remark much on the animal cruelty. Perhaps because they saw it as an authentic aspect of ghetto black culture? In any case, Vick must be retarded to not realize the status dogs hold in the majority American culture. The boxer Roy Jones Jr. is smart enough to stick with chicken fighting, because Americans don't care as much about chickens.

Posted by Juan | August 27, 2007 4:05 PM

Despite what you may have heard, yes, lobsters (and fish, btw) feel pain. The presence or absence of a cerebral cortex doesn't tell the whole story about whether or not an animal can feel pain.

I'm pretty certain that when people look back on our era from 150-200 years in the future, they're going to find the widespread habit of consuming the seared flesh of mammals raised for the slaughter to have been a bizarre and barbaric practice.

I know that genetics are not destiny. But you are talking about moving away from a practice implanted through millions and millions of years of evolution. (And, no, it is not true that we were once benevolent vegans as hunter-gatherers.)

I have never heard a particularly cogent explanation for why exactly it's moral to consume animal life but not plant life. Every time people try to, there seems to be some statement like "It's perfectly obvious...."

Posted by Freddie | August 27, 2007 4:06 PM

I'm not sure about that -- hunters shoot deer for fun and for food, but they don't capture them and beat them to death.

If Vick was shooting stray dogs that wandered onto his property, I really doubt he'd get into legal trouble.

Posted by stm177 | August 27, 2007 4:08 PM

Re: " I have never heard a particularly cogent explanation for why exactly it's moral to consume animal life but not plant life. "

Setting aside religious dogma, I think the most common explanation you hear relies on the naturalistic fallacy: its "natural" for us to eat animals (since we evolved to do so), and therefore it must be moral. Yes, its a non sequitur, but so what?

Posted by Jim W | August 27, 2007 4:10 PM

Isn't the definition of libertarian-
"I pulled the wings off of flies when I was younger"?

Posted by An Outhouse | August 27, 2007 4:12 PM

150 years from now we will eat only the flesh of libertarians that Michael Vick's descendants have pitted against each other.

Posted by MikeJ | August 27, 2007 4:13 PM

Whoops! Jim W's response prompted me to see that I had it backwards. I was asking why, as vegan and vegetarians think, it's morally permissible to eat plants but not animals.

Posted by Freddie | August 27, 2007 4:13 PM

ugh ... Matt, stick to political posts. Random Jack Handy-like, name-calling musings like this come across as the shallow and pseudo-deep thoughts of a newly-aware teenager....

Posted by Polly | August 27, 2007 4:14 PM

lots of athletes [] beat up people -- wives and girlfriends particularly -- but we get more worked up over Vick's cruelty to animals. Why? The best answer I can think of is that sometimes people have it coming.

'Heat of passion' violence against another person is understandable to most people, even if not necessarily forgivable. We can easily grasp the concept of provocation even if we don't believe it justifies the assault.

Premeditated cruelty is something else. What Vick's accused of is the latter. Unless the dogs had attacked him first, he'd have no basis for claiming provocation, and in fact he has not done so.

If Vick made a habit of binding, torturing and electrocuting random women I'm sure we'd be just as "worked up" -- very likely more so.

Posted by Ryan | August 27, 2007 4:17 PM

Whether Matt's right about the time frame or the extent of movement, I think one would have to assume that the trend is going to be away from eating animals. Increased knowledge in 3 areas is going to move us in that direction, IMO:

1. The breakdown of the ability to any longer maintain that man is a "special" animal distinct in kind. Our knowledge of DNA is showing beyond any doubt (creationists' and IDers' lunatic ravings notwithstanding) that we are just further evolved, not some special creation.

2. Increased knowledge of the intelligence capacities of animals is likely to reveal that animals have far greater capacity to think and feel than we have previously thought.

3. Increased knowledge of how to create nutritionally sufficient (and, hopefully, tasty) food without using animal flesh.

Yes, people will resist giving up eating animals because they like it. I like it. But other than inertia, seems to me there's nothing likely to trend in the opposite direction, i.e., driving people to be more animal-dependent.

Posted by Glenn | August 27, 2007 4:17 PM

"You are, of course, free to disagree with libertarians on any given issue, but isn't this going at little too far - simplistic and childish name-calling even?"

No, name-calling is appropriate for the egregiously simplistic and childish ideology of libertarianism. Respectful disagreement is what happens at the big kids table.

"I have never heard a particularly cogent explanation for why exactly it's moral to consume animal life but not plant life."

You're kidding, right? The history of the western values of human rights, for example, is a steady process of increasing inclusion, moving from a very narrow view of those who deserve consideration under the law to a much more broad version. The inclusion has been based upon recognize similarities and downplaying previously perceived and supposedly radical differences.

Animals are far, far more like humans than are plants from any rational point of view, not the least scientific. We are beginning to protect the animals that seem the most similar to ourselves, the other primates, and we will no doubt later include more in an expanding circle. Plants won't be included in that circle for a long time to come because, as you well know, they are quite a different type of thing than most animals.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | August 27, 2007 4:19 PM

We just had a huge series of posts at Corrente on cruelty and the Vicks case that I'd like to draw your attention to. The dicussion was passionate, partly because we are a very diverse blog, and partly because some of us are animal rescuers.

See Michael Vicks pleads guilty

And Paying the Vic(k) one more time.

Also Humanization of animals, animalization of humans.

I guess, whatever else I feel about the nexus of thoughts and feelings that animal cruelty--oh, humans aren't animals?--and the Vicks case--oh, "they" care about dogs, eh?--it seems very odd to me that this summer we are being told stories, not about sharks and missing white women, though both are always in plentiful supply, but about--in one reading of the Vicks case--the colored people and their bizarre, lethal habits. All to prepare the lizard backbrain for a full-fledged moral panic and an extremely ugly campaign 2008, I would imagine.

Posted by lambert strether | August 27, 2007 4:21 PM

This is false, because many people treat their familiar animals exceptionally well. Personally, I'll give a cat a five-thousand dollar surgery when hell freezes over, but others disagree. Therefore anti-cruelty is not just an anti-sadist human strategy, it's a pro-animal strategy. It's actually an in-group/out-group thing, with some minor modulation by reason.

Posted by turkey | August 27, 2007 4:25 PM

Freddie--
Because animals have complex nervous systems comparable to ours. Plants don't.

Also, the cultivation of cucumbers and carrots doesn't involve stuff like this.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_05_23/cover.html

By the way, what exactly did you mean when you said the practice of eating meat was "implanted" in us by evolution?

Posted by Ashish George | August 27, 2007 4:25 PM

The breakdown of the ability to any longer maintain that man is a "special" animal distinct in kind. Our knowledge of DNA is showing beyond any doubt (creationists' and IDers' lunatic ravings notwithstanding) that we are just further evolved, not some special creation.

Isn't the fact that we have that knowledge of DNA evidence that we are, in fact, a special animal?

Look, it's the fact of human compassion-- a trait not shared by animals-- that shows the fact that humans are, in fact, different. I would argue that we aren't just different, either. We are elevated, or whatever else term you want to use. A man walking by a starving or hurt dog will try to help, usually. A dog walking by a starving or hurt human, even independent of its inability to help, is flatly indifferent to other animals' suffering. Despite what Disney and crunchy PETA-people have done to say otherwise, the fact is that animals are utterly unconcerned with humans, up until humans become a) a threat or b) prey. The idea of the noble or virtuous animal is illogical.

Some want humans to be humane and compassionate towards animals, but they don't want to acknowledge the superiority of a species that has that capacity for that compassion. It doesn't make sense.

Posted by Freddie | August 27, 2007 4:26 PM

"You are, of course, free to disagree with libertarians on any given issue, but isn't this going at little too far - simplistic and childish name-calling even?"

I might have agreed to this a couple of weeks ago, but now that I've been (overly) exposed to the Atlantic's newest blogger and her followers, I gotta conclude that MY's analysis is spot-on.

Posted by Woody Bombay | August 27, 2007 4:27 PM

I agree w/Homer on this I see no reason why the worlds population will change their eating habits in 200 years. I've tried at various times in my life to be vegetarian but it doesn't stick, I personally like meat. Two of my favorite meat eater quotes, I don't know their sources.

"We haven't spend thousands of years getting to the top of the food change to throw it all away now."

"I God didn't want us to eat other animals he wouldn't have made them out of tasty meat."

Posted by Steve | August 27, 2007 4:28 PM

Come on people, keep up. 150 years from now, slaughtering animals for food will be seen as barbaric because it will be cheaper and easier to eat in vitro meat. There'd be no reason to kill an animal for food other than sadism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas_section2-9.html?ex=1188360000&en=11fcb02433f63aaf&ei=5070

Posted by beowulf | August 27, 2007 4:32 PM

[O]ne main reason we forbid cruelty to animals isn't because we're against cruelty to animals but because we want to discourage cruelty. . . . because people who get their jollies from torture seem dangerous.

Exactly. And George W. Bush fits squarely in this dangerous class of people:

"GEORGE W. BUSH BLEW UP FROGS"

Posted by Hal | August 27, 2007 4:34 PM

You're kidding, right?

Plants won't be included in that circle for a long time to come because, as you well know, they are quite a different type of thing than most animals.

This is what I'm talking about-- arguing by asserting that something is self-evident. I don't think that's generally considered logically sound. Why does the fact that plants are very different from animals disqualify them from the right to not be eaten? Why is similarity to humans
necessary to enjoy moral protection? Again, you're left with "everybody knows" arguments, which don't move me much.

Because animals have complex nervous systems comparable to ours. Plants don't.

Uh-huh. And by what particular moral reasoning did you divine the notion that possessing a complex nervous system is a prerequisite for a right to life? That seems like an incredibly arbitrary distinction to me. Why is that supposedly morally compelling?

Posted by Freddie | August 27, 2007 4:35 PM

Don't worry, soon all of our meat will be produced without animals; large vats or tanks of muscle, or perhaps mile-long rows of headless cattle and pigs fed nutrients directly, will be grown thanks to bioengineering, and the question of animal cruelty will no longer be involved with meat production.

On the downside, it will be fantastically expensive, won't taste like the real thing, and have all sorts of weird other questions arise.

On the plus side, you'll get ribeyes which taste like salmon, and pork with built-in avocado flavoring, and chickens self-basted in Viagra.

Posted by El Cid | August 27, 2007 4:36 PM

Freddie:

Couldn't our unbelievable superiority be an argument in favor of treating animals better, instead of a justification for treating them cruelly?

Posted by Steve V | August 27, 2007 4:36 PM

Couldn't our unbelievable superiority be an argument in favor of treating animals better, instead of a justification for treating them cruelly?

No question. I'm not saying we're superior, so we should be cruel to animals. I'm just reacting to people saying that there is no real difference to humans and animals. It just seems to me the fact that we ask ourselves whether we should be cruel to animals or not is one sense in which we are different. But point taken.

Posted by Freddie | August 27, 2007 4:39 PM

I’m not a libertarian, but I don’t really see why a libertarian framework makes it hard to have a discussion about animal rights. It would all come down to how one defined what ‘property’ is, and to a lesser extent what an ‘individual’ is.

Actually, the fact that libertarians often favor abstract moral theorizing over empirical questions is less of a handicap in the area of animal rights than in most other areas. Since it’s impossible to empirically decide the question of whether the suffering of an animal should morally count for the same as human suffering, discussions over animal rights tend to end in the land of abstract moral theories no matter what framework you start from.

Posted by RC | August 27, 2007 4:40 PM

If your friend liked to lobsters for fun

Liked to what?

Is this a contest?

Posted by jerry | August 27, 2007 4:42 PM

"Isn't the fact that we have that knowledge of DNA evidence that we are, in fact, a special animal?"

No. Each species is unique in some way or another, or many—that's a necessary consequence of the simple differentiation of speciation. Your argument assumes that our differences are more "special" than any others. How can you justify this in a non-tautological way? You probably can't.

It's not clear to me that no other animal possesses compassion, by the way. There's a number of strong arguments to be made that animals are far more likely to possess such elevated, "unique", and supposedly human traits as compassion and love than they are, say, the ability to count to five.

I'm not denying that humans dominate this planet in a very real sense or that we have some traits that do seem to lift us out of the context of the rest Earth. But even if you can successfully argue for our extreme uniqueness (uniqueness isn't relative, but you know what I mean), then it's still not clear that this accrues to it any more "rights".

As a more rigorous, scientific response to your implicit argument, I recall George Willliams's introductory point in his seminal book, Adaptation and Natural Selection, that the claim that "Man is the most complex animal" is suspect. By what criteria are we judging complexity?, he asks. He points out that the complex life cycle of (IIRC) a caterpillar/butterfly is arguably a more complex organism.

The point is that a lot of things we take as obvious common sense with regard to the natural world and Man's relation with it are, in fact, quite suspect and likely the product of an unquestioned anthropocentricism.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | August 27, 2007 4:44 PM

Ever read a hunting magazine essay about the joys of bonding with an elk while you chase its bleeding, walking-dead body over the mountains for 3 days? While I have no problem with hunting for food I have always wondered why these glossy magazine articles about the joys of precipitating and then watching slow agonizing death were not considered cruelty.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | August 27, 2007 4:45 PM

"Lunatic Fringe?"

This blog might be better served by working to explain a central paradox inherent to a significant chunk of the left--that the United States power is always good when defending (or attempting to defend) the collective from the individual and US power is always bad when defending the collective from another collective (such as an external enemy)--than taking unsupported potshots at libertarians.

There's not a great many ideas on the libertarian "lunatic fringe" as foolish or suicidal as the Kucinich/Greenwald brand of internationalism.

Privatizing the proverbial fire department may be a stupidity of cloistered libertarian ideologues, but it's not the stupidity that ceding US sovereignty to hostile or competitive voting blocs (the members of OPEC, Russia and its proxies) is. These groups don't share the childish Utopian dreams of Greenwald.

And don't even get me started on the "Truthers."

Posted by Steve | August 27, 2007 4:45 PM

Homer said:

What is your basis for this opinion [that in 150 to 200 years people will look back on the age of meat-eating as bizarre and barbaric]? People have been eating meat for as long as there have been people, and there have been domesticated mammals for almost as long.

and Freddie said:

I know that genetics are not destiny. But you are talking about moving away from a practice implanted through millions and millions of years of evolution. (And, no, it is not true that we were once benevolent vegans as hunter-gatherers.)

Simply because people have been eating meat for a long time is no argument that the practice will continue forever. It may. It may not. Many practices that were once common and unquestioned (slavery, attacking of neighboring tribes to steal women, rape and looting in battle, the oppression of women, the hunting of whales, the thoroughly wanton killing of songbirds, revenge killings and on and on) are now looked on as bizarre and barbaric. Eating meat may or may not join this list. Predicting the future in this way is really not possible.

As for the argument from evolution, opinions vary. Some argue that proto-humans were hunters and copious eaters of meat, though further evidence suggests that many of the hunter caves where pre-human and animal bones were found mixed were actually the caves of large carnivorous animals that ate both pre-humans and other animals. We will probably never no for sure how the various species of pre-humans fed themselves over a period of 6 million years, but I suspect that the most likely diet consisted of food that was relatively easy to come by--fruit, seeds, nuts, roots, insects, shellfish, carrion, and the occasional bonus catch of a live animal.

IP Guy said "and meat protein probably helped jump start civilization". I don't know what the basis for this statement is, but I've always heard that the basis of the earliest civilizations was the mass production of grain, and that most early citizens of civilized societies ate poorer diets than their hunter-gatherer contemporaries.

My point here is that the arguments from history and the predictions of the future are not particularly useful. Nor are complex rationalizations likely to be very accurate. When it comes to moral issues, much of what we feel comes from "the gut" and not the mind. This gut reaction is formed not so much by carefully laid out cost benefits analysis, but by certain innate concepts of right and wrong which are further influenced by cultural norms and personal understandings. Please read "Moral Minds" by Marc Hauser.

I think our current notions of what is and is not acceptable in treating animals is highly irrational--more so than similar notions about humans. Such moral currents regarding animals are driven by convenience and also by the sentimental attachment we feel to certain species. Why is it OK to subject a pig, a large brained social animal, to a life of unending cruelty in a factory farm, only to slaughter it in the most horrifying of circumstances (anyone who has ever visited a pig slaughterhouse and heard the screaming will never forget it)? Why is it not OK to raise a dog, keep it healthy, feed it well, train it, give it a purpose, and then allow that dog to be severely injured or killed in a fight? The argument for utility (we eat pigs but not dogs) is not persuasive when there are popular movements afoot to ban the slaughter and eating of horses and the eating of dog meat is already illegal.

Spare me any laboriously reasoned treatises about how dogs and horses are somehow special because of feelings of reciprocity. The real answer is that people (in general) anthropomorphize dogs and horses in a manner that they do not pigs, cattle, chickens, and fish.

However, in certain cases, people can identify with meat animals. Paul and Linda McCartney famously decided to stop eating meat when eating a leg of lamb while simultaneously watching a lamb on their farm cavort about. And, I would imagine, that if most people had found an injured pig had wandered into their yard they would make every effort to comfort and aid the animal--though they might then go inside and whip up some factory pork chops.

If Vick was shooting stray dogs that wandered onto his property, I really doubt he'd get into legal trouble.

Actually, stm177, this practice, though arguable beneficial for local ecosystems and public safety, is illegal pretty much everywhere in the United States.

Posted by Rob Mac | August 27, 2007 4:45 PM

"when people look back on our era from 150-200 years in the future, they're going to find the widespread habit of consuming the seared flesh of mammals raised for the slaughter to have been a bizarre and barbaric practice."

"What is your basis for this opinion?"

Matt just wants to use this as an opportunity to accuse Libertarians of being a "lunatic fringe". Matt isn't opposed to cruel treatment of other philosophies than his own.

It also allows him to suck up to the "government is your friend" liberals.

As for his notion that 200 years from now, we will look back at eating meat as a barbaric custom: well, this is a seriously ridiculous notion.

First of all, as was pointed out, humans eat meat and have done so since their inception. What part of "omnivorous" doesn't Matt understand?

There's no "moral" component to this and it's stupid to suggest otherwise. It's biology and evolution. Vegetarians who make their case based on superior health claims may or may not be correct, but any other argument is just stupid.

Second, 200 years from now, Transhumans won't be "eating" anything, let alone meat. They will have more efficient energy sources to "chew on".

And once Transhumans are in existence, humans will have to be more worried about whether Transhumans consider humans to be "a barbaric practice" more than meat-eating.

It doesn't look good from here.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 27, 2007 4:47 PM

Hmm, are you sure about that? I know the local hunting club in my area stages coyote hunts. They get 100 or 200 people to start at one side of a woods and push the coyotes out to another area where they are all shot. They do it to get rid of nuisance animals and protect local livestock.

Coyotes aren't native to Michigan, so maybe that makes it legal?

They aren't dogs either, but I kinda meant feral dogs in a rural area, not your next door neighbors retriever in a suburb.

Now, I'm really curious what the law is.

Posted by stm177 | August 27, 2007 4:53 PM

I don't think that line of reasoning works on libertarian terms, but since most people don't adhere to lunatic fringe ideologies, that's probably what's motivated a lot of people.

And yet oddly, that's the argument that many of us in this particular lunatic fringe have made during this particular blogburst - that cruelty to animals for the sake of cruelty itself is qualitatively different and worse than killing animals for utilitarian purposes. And, again oddly, most of this discussion took place among fringe lunatics wh0 strongly oppose the torture of human beings.

So I'm not really seeing where the rest of you have much to add . . .

;)

Posted by Jim Henley | August 27, 2007 4:53 PM

"Why is similarity to humans necessary to enjoy moral protection?"

Well, yes, that's a good question. But, assuming this, it forms the basis of a "cogent" argument for differentiating plants from animals with regard to "rights".

And while you raise a very good question, you're quite wrong to imply, or outright assert, that there's no strong arguments answering it. I'm sorry, but I can't provide a primer on the history of moral philosophy in the west for you.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | August 27, 2007 4:53 PM

"Uh-huh. And by what particular moral reasoning did you divine the notion that possessing a complex nervous system is a prerequisite for a right to life? That seems like an incredibly arbitrary distinction to me. Why is that supposedly morally compelling?"

Possessing a complex nervous system means you can feel pain and discomfort. Animals don't feel what humans feel, but they feel pain in a way comparable to the way we do.

As Julian Sanchez has said elsewhere: "Here's a wacky notion: Moral status doesn't supervene on DNA. In other words, it's not something inscrutably wonderful about the order of human genes that makes us deserving of respect from our fellows, but our minds—the fact that we're thinking beings, capable of desiring and loving and hating and making plans and feeling pain. It isn't, I think, a terribly controversial position. All our common sense moral talk about why you shouldn't harm people implicitly makes reference to those features: We say things like 'don't do that; imagine how you'd feel if someone did that to you.' We use consent to distinguish between ranges of things it's permissible and impermissible to do to people, which would be hard to make sense of if it were our genes and bodies that were carriers of intrinsic worth. Boxing and assault can affect bodies identically; the mind makes the difference."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/108984.html

And modern factory farming causes serious pain and discomfort to the animals involved. From the link in my last post:

"At the Smithfield mass-confinement hog farms I toured in North Carolina, the visitor is greeted by a bedlam of squealing, chain rattling, and horrible roaring. To maximize the use of space and minimize the need for care, the creatures are encased row after row, 400 to 500 pound mammals trapped without relief inside iron crates seven feet long and 22 inches wide. They chew maniacally on bars and chains, as foraging animals will do when denied straw, or engage in stereotypical nest-building with the straw that isn’t there, or else just lie there like broken beings. The spirit of the place would be familiar to police who raided that Tennessee puppy-mill run by Stanley and Judy Johnson, only instead of 350 tortured animals, millions—and the law prohibits none of it."

Posted by Ashish George | August 27, 2007 4:53 PM

If RSH will just mention the "singularity" and "precious bodily fluids" someone should have enough squares checked on their kook card to yell bingo!

Posted by MikeJ | August 27, 2007 4:54 PM

Meat tastes good, and the animals can't fight back against us. Unless lobsters and cows evolve superhuman strength and intelligence, or the ability to shoot lethal laser beams out of their eyes, we're likely to keep eating them.

Hopefully we'll learn to do so in more humane and less environmentally destructive ways, though.

Posted by RC | August 27, 2007 4:54 PM

I don't think arthropods have real nervous systems.

Oh Harvard philosophy department, you're teh best!

Posted by Charlie Murtaugh | August 27, 2007 4:56 PM

I'm not being obtuse (or at least, trying to be obtuse!) by asking the question of why it's ok to eat plants and not animals. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that there was a time when asking "Why is it ok to eat animals?" would be greeted by precisely the same kind of incredulity as my question now elicits. The point is that things that now seem arbitrary and unfair haven't always, and that these things are always in flux. That isn't an argument for abandoning those moral principals-- I'm not saying that the fact that plants may someday enjoy the same protections as animals means you should stop saying we shouldn't eat meat-- but it is, I think, an argument for abandoning moralizing about eating animals. I'm someone who has a lot of sympathy for the opinions of animal lovers, but a sanctimonious vegan is just absolutely fucking insufferable. I think that if people bear in mind that moral decisions are always shifting, and that they always contain some form of arbitrary distinctions, it would help keep them from becoming your average Sarah Lawrence vegan douche bag.

Posted by Freddie | August 27, 2007 5:00 PM

http://icwdm.org/handbook/carnivor/FeralDog.asp

From that site: "Legal Status

State and local laws concerning feral and free-ranging dogs vary considerably, but most states have some regulations. Many states, particularly those in the west, permit individuals to shoot dogs that are chasing or killing game animals or livestock. State agencies or agriculture departments usually are responsible for controlling feral dogs in rural areas. No states consider feral dogs to be game animals. Most cities have animal control agents to pick up abandoned and free-ranging domestic dogs.

Aerial shooting is one of the most efficient control techniques available for killing feral dogs. Where a pack of damaging feral dogs is established, it may be worthwhile to trap one or two members of the pack, fit them with radio transmitters, and release them. Feral dogs are highly social, and by periodically locating the radio-tagged dogs with a radio receiver, it is possible to locate other members of the group. When other members of the pack are destroyed, the radioed dogs can be located and shot. This technique has been used effectively by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to eliminate packs of problem wolves.

Hunting from the ground has been used to control feral dogs. A predator call may lure dogs within rifle range. Establishing a shooting blind can be helpful, especially along a trail used by dogs, near a den, a garbage dump, or a large animal carcass. "

Kinda getting far afield however.

Posted by stm177 | August 27, 2007 5:02 PM

And while you raise a very good question, you're quite wrong to imply, or outright assert, that there's no strong arguments answering it.

Well played. Remind me to use that one next time I can't provide a counter-argument for something I don't like.

Posted by Freddie | August 27, 2007 5:04 PM

"lunatic fringe"

Way to alienate a minority of your readers, Matt.

By all means demonstrate using your towering intellect and incisive reasoning why libertarians are wrong, wrong, wrong about so many things - but name calling?

Posted by Cerro | August 27, 2007 5:21 PM

"If RSH will just mention the "singularity" and "precious bodily fluids" someone should have enough squares checked on their kook card to yell bingo!"

What possible connection is there between those two concepts?

Other than your stupidity, of course.

Apparently anybody who keeps up with technological progress is a "kook", in your view. This makes you a moron by any definition.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 27, 2007 5:24 PM

> State and local laws concerning feral and
> free-ranging dogs vary considerably,

Google "feral pig hunting" sometime. You wouldn't have thought it would be legal to use a machine gun for hunting would you? But many states _advise_ the use of a high-power semiautomatic rifle as a /minimum/ if you approach one of these things.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | August 27, 2007 5:26 PM

Cerro,

Speaking of name-calling: I have been called a traitor who hates his country and wants to see it destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth. You know why? Because of disagreements over foreign policy and U.S. history. Events have proved me right, and still, by some, I am called a traitor who hates his country and wants to see it destroyed.

So grow a pair.

Posted by Woody Bombay | August 27, 2007 5:30 PM

The lobster's nervous system has been a subject of scientific interest for at least the past 350 years.

But yeah, what Michael Pollan said. The US system of intensive meat-farming, with its sick cattle, lakes of pigshit and assembly-line chickens, is basically unsustainable.

I don't know what the basis for this statement is, but I've always heard that the basis of the earliest civilizations was the mass production of grain, and that most early citizens of civilized societies ate poorer diets than their hunter-gatherer contemporaries.

The big advantage of settlement was grain storage: the ability to hoard a portion of seed for the next spring in dry, sheltered underground silos.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | August 27, 2007 5:33 PM

You know, sometimes the best parts of your posts are the randomly missing words.

I actually did LOL over "If your friend liked to lobsters for fun..." It just brought this image, or rather a lack of concrete meaning into my head. What is your friend doing if he likes to lobsters? It's just awesome and funny in an absurdist sort of way.

Thanks for the laugh.

Posted by IMU | August 27, 2007 5:35 PM

Our knowledge of DNA is showing beyond any doubt (creationists' and IDers' lunatic ravings notwithstanding) that we are just further evolved, not some special creation.

Indeed, we're not even "further evolved." We're just as evolved as any other species currently inhabiting the planet.

Posted by tps12 | August 27, 2007 5:42 PM

Sure, Woody, name calling happens, but that doesn't mean it befits intelligent persons sitting on lofty perches such as the Atlantic.

I'm a customer of Matt's, why should I enjoy being insulted by him?

I don't expect I'll cry into my pillow about it, but what's wrong with criticising rudeness?

Posted by Cerro | August 27, 2007 5:43 PM

The point is that a lot of things we take as obvious common sense with regard to the natural world and Man's relation with it are, in fact, quite suspect and likely the product of an unquestioned anthropocentricism.

If a liberal is someone who won't take his own side in a fight, a vegan is someone who won't take his own species.

Posted by Ben | August 27, 2007 5:43 PM

Freddie, there's no real reason to think that any of the plants we're familiar with have subjective experiences. This is not an evolutionary inevitability -- there could have been plants that evolved sufficiently complex nervous systems that they would have subjective experiences, and inflicting suffering on them would be wrong -- but, as a contingent fact about the world, they don't.

There are also species within the kingdom animalia for which there are also no reason to think they have subjective experiences -- sea sponges, for instance, virtually certainly do not.

What is it like to be a chicken locked in a battery cage? Probably very unpleasant. What is it like to be a cornstalk growing in a crowded cornfield? Probably nothing at all.

I'm assuming, here, that we agree that subjective experiences come from the interaction of nervous system tissue in a manner that I, personally, don't really understand (I read Gödel, Escher, Bach once. I didn't really find it satisfying). If we assume that people experience things subjectively for some other reason (such as some weird Cartesian ghost in the machine), then I don't think rational discussion is really possible.

BTW, perhaps before you start throwing stones at sanctimonious, insufferable vegans, you should see if your house looks a bit glassy?

Posted by Julian Elson | August 27, 2007 5:57 PM

If no one eats beef it would be like a cow genecide. People would stop raising cows, and cows don't have a natural habitat. People don't really want that, even animal rights freaks would have to admitt millions of cows are better than a few thousand.

In the future hopefully farming will be less cruel, meat will be more expensive, but we will have genetically engineered plants that produce mussile tissue which is on a cellular level identical to beef, pork, etc... It will be the largest crop grown world wide.

Posted by other matt | August 27, 2007 6:01 PM

Fruits were evolved as a means of seed dispersal - they are **meant** to be eaten.

Anyway, you may like this:
http://www.ivu.org/congress/2000/jainism.html

Excerpts:

"Don't plants have life?" In this respects Jains perhaps were the very first ones to acknowledge that plants are a life form, long before it was established by the modern day biological sciences. Jains recognize five physical senses namely touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing as the principal attributes of living beings. All life forms in the universe are then classified in terms of the senses found in various creatures. Here as a word of caution, the senses should not be confused with other attributes of life, such as breathing, circulatory and nervous systems, heart and brain etc. that are dealt with as a separate topic in Jainism. The lowest life forms are those with only one sense, the sense of touch, such as the plant life, the highest life forms have all the fives senses such as human beings, mammals and most of the animal kingdom. The other intermediary life forms are the living beings with: two senses - touch and taste such as an earth worm, three senses - touch, taste and smell such as lice, and four senses- touch, taste, smell and sight for example mosquitoes. Senses appear in various living beings strictly in the order specified, i.e., touch is the most primitive of all senses, and hearing is the last sense found at the most advanced stage of development. No other combinations of these senses are known to exist. This in itself may be the most remarkable contribution of ancient Jains to the modern life sciences on the evolution of living beings.

Having classified all life forms in this manner, and realizing that human beings must eat to derive their nutrition and to survive, life with only one sense, that is basically plant life, is the only permitted food for human consumption. To reconcile the principle of non-violence with the consumption of plant based diet, and to preserve plant-life as best as possible, there are strict dietary codes of practice recommended for day to day living. These include prohibition on the consumption of some vegetables and fruits, restrictions on procurement of produce, restrictions of times and timings, fasting, recommended occupations etc. Such codes, with their feasible interpretations follow. "

"Vegetables and fruits that grow underground (roots of plants) are prohibited as a general rule. Clearly enough, to procure such vegetables and fruits, one must pull out the plant from the root, thus destroying the entire plant, and with it all the other micro organisms around the root. Fresh fruits and vegetables should be plucked only when ripe and ready to fall off, or ideally after they have fallen off the plant. In case they are plucked from the plants, only as much as required should be procured and consumed without waste. Grains, such as wheat, rice, maize, beans are obtained when the plants or the pods are dry and dead. Cutting down of green trees for wood or any other use is strictly prohibited. This is indeed a shining example of "conservation" in ancient times, which modern civilization is still trying to find ways for."

Posted by Arun | August 27, 2007 6:09 PM

If no one eats beef it would be like a cow genecide.

No, a cow genocide would be actually killing lots and lots of cows (kind of like we do now). A situation where all those cows don't come into existence in the first place is not at all the same thing.

People would stop raising cows, and cows don't have a natural habitat.
They do in some places.

People don't really want that, even animal rights freaks would have to admitt millions of cows are better than a few thousand.

Wrong. Many fewer cows, but leading contented cow lives, is a better situation, morally and environmentally, than millions and millions of them being factory farmed. X's not coming into existence at all is not somehow of less value than X's living an existence filled with pain and suffering.

Posted by cow | August 27, 2007 6:09 PM

Random Jack Handy-like, name-calling musings like this come across as the shallow and pseudo-deep thoughts of a newly-aware teenager....

Just like libertarianism does!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

In all seriousness, Julian Sanchez had a good post a few days ago addressing the limitations of a libertarian rights-based framework for discussing animal welfare. Most of us would agree that animals do not possess individual rights, but they require a certain level of legal protection anyway.

The interesting thing, to me, is the way that most libertarians seem to appreciate that their property rights do not give them an unfettered right to abuse animals they own, because the way people treat animals has repercussions that can't simply be addressed as a matter of individual rights. If only they would come to a similar understanding about how the businesses they own and the land they own also entail responsibilities that go beyond the framework of individual rights, the world would be a better place.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 27, 2007 6:27 PM

Are libertarians simply incapable of having a basic moral intuition that it isn't OK to, say, torture a dog? I don't get it.

Posted by live | August 27, 2007 6:35 PM

Vegetarians who make their case based on superior health claims may or may not be correct, but any other argument is just stupid.

What about environmental arguments? It takes about 10-15 pounds of grain to create 1 pound of meat (a conservative estimate). As world population grows, bringing with it rising worldwide caloric intake, eating meat just becomes way too inefficient.

If the Chinese and Indians ate meat at the same rate as people here in the US, there'd be no rainforest. With a world population topping off at around 9 billion, eating meat at the rate we do now in the US, there'd be no forests, period, just acres and acres of factory farms.

Ethical and health reasons are all well and good, but it's the environmental strain of meat eating that will ultimately result in a worldwide vegetarian diet; it's the only efficient way to keep 10 bil people fed.

Posted by Dave White | August 27, 2007 6:40 PM

State and local laws concerning feral and
> free-ranging dogs vary considerably,

Google "feral pig hunting" sometime. You wouldn't have thought it would be legal to use a machine gun for hunting would you? But many states _advise_ the use of a high-power semiautomatic rifle as a /minimum/ if you approach one of these things.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | August 27, 2007 5:26 PM
*************************************************

A high-powered semi-automatic rifle isn't a machine gun. You just described a huge percentage of big game hunting rifles in use today.

The emphasis is on semi-automatic. You don't want to be fooling with a bolt if a pig takes after you.

Posted by Campesino | August 27, 2007 6:41 PM

Matt: Have you even been reading the "libertarian" blogs? The main argument in favor of laws against animal cruelty has been the exact one you describe. That's the argument I think that's most convincing.

Posted by Joe Strummer | August 27, 2007 7:11 PM

> A high-powered semi-automatic rifle isn't a
> machine gun. You just described a huge percentage
> of big game hunting rifles in use today.

Apparently you missed the word "minimum" in my post. Machine guns (fully automatic), even if you have the necessary license, are prohibited for hunting pretty much everywhere. However, in the states I am thinking of the licensed machine gun owner IS allowed to hunt feral pig with them. An M1 is the _minimum_ recommended semi-automatic.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | August 27, 2007 7:32 PM

Despite what you may have heard, yes, lobsters (and fish, btw) feel pain. The presence or absence of a cerebral cortex doesn't tell the whole story about whether or not an animal can feel pain.

No, they don't. I guess it's true that a cerebral cortex doesn't "tell the whole story" about an animal's capacity to feel pain, but it's a pretty good rough guide.

Posted by cerebrocrat | August 27, 2007 7:36 PM

"It takes about 10-15 pounds of grain to create 1 pound of meat (a conservative estimate). As world population grows, bringing with it rising worldwide caloric intake, eating meat just becomes way too inefficient."

OTOH, and this has historically been fairly important, vegetarian societies have no way of coping with crop failures. A shortfall in grain production directly translates into less calories available to people. Meat eating, really omnivorous, societies can respond to crop failures by directly consuming the reduced quantity of grain, and so are much more robust in the face of agricultural uncertainty.

Anyway, following advances in in vitro meat production, I'd guess that raising animals for meat, except for niche markets, has only a few decades remaining. And, yes, it will taste the same.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | August 27, 2007 7:54 PM

matt said:

If no one eats beef it would be like a cow genecide. People would stop raising cows, and cows don't have a natural habitat. People don't really want that, even animal rights freaks would have to admitt millions of cows are better than a few thousand.

He's actually got somewhat of a good point. I've heard a very similar argument made by a politically conservative English woman. She worried (supposedly, I think it was really just for argument's sake) that if people in England kept turning vegetarian that the countryside would be altered as more cattle farmers sold off their land.

And I think that matt is right that if there were a sudden end to beef production there would be a massive rescue effort amongst the animal rights community.

There is an important distinction to be made between animal rights advocates and environmentalists. There are animal rights extremists groups (such as PeTA) who take just stupid positions on issues pitting animal rights against ecosystem stability. Most famously, PeTA and other animal rights groups have campaigned to protect the "rights" of feral pigs in Hawaii who are ruining fragile ecosystems there (yes, I know the PeTA folks argue that this isn't true).

This is why I kind of dislike talk of animal rights. Animals aren't people and I don't think there really is a sense in which animals have "rights" in the same way people do. This doesn't mean it's OK to torment them. An animal doesn't have a "right" not to be tormented--otherwise, what do we do with cats who torment their prey before killing it? But it is still wrong for people to do this. I think it is possible to have certain values that transcend the rights or lack thereof of any particular entity (human, plant, animal, god, whatever).

Posted by Rob Mac | August 27, 2007 7:59 PM

OTOH, and this has historically been fairly important, vegetarian societies have no way of coping with crop failures. A shortfall in grain production directly translates into less calories available to people. Meat eating, really omnivorous, societies can respond to crop failures by directly consuming the reduced quantity of grain, and so are much more robust in the face of agricultural uncertainty.

I don't think I quite follow the logic here. If meat eating societies have been able to survive crop failures by eating grain directly (thus increasing caloric efficiency), how are they any more robust than vegetarian societies who do that anyway?

Posted by Dave White | August 27, 2007 8:05 PM

Dave White,
I guess the argument is based on the 15:1 ratio; the vegetarian societies will expand to the full capacity of the 15 units of grain. When that fails they have no reserve. Meat-eating societies expand only to the capacity of the 1 unit of meat; when the harvest comes in small they slaughter some of the cattle and eat the 15 units of grain per unit of cattle.

Yeah, sounds pretty weak to me too.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | August 27, 2007 8:12 PM

the vegetarian societies will expand to the full capacity of the 15 units of grain. When that fails they have no reserve.

Societies have been known to store grain for later use, no?

Posted by live | August 27, 2007 8:16 PM

> Societies have been known to store grain
> for later use, no?

Well, there's one problem. Another one is that after the first short harvest and meat conversion it will certainly occur to some bright 22 y.o. male that if they ate grain all the time there would be more room for population growth - if you know what I mean.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | August 27, 2007 8:21 PM

I think Julian Sanchez is largely right in pointing out the issues with the Kantian "he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men" viewpoint. (I'm trying to get MY to drop this view by associating it with Kant in the hopes that that will cause him to be instinctively revulsed by it through association.)

Posted by Julian Elson | August 27, 2007 8:22 PM

Re: Brett Bellmore's point about crop failure.

It's worth noting that America's diet is as dependent on corn as any ancient society was ever dependent on a single crop. If we ever had a major failure of our corn crop (from a new pest or a rampaging disease) meat production would suffer as much as anything. People with diverse vegetarian diets would probably be less directly affected than meat eaters. The chicken, pork, and beef Americans is all raised on corn. Such a disaster would be so huge, though, that everyone would be hurt.

Posted by Rob Mac | August 27, 2007 8:42 PM

> If we ever had a major failure of our corn crop
> (from a new pest or a rampaging disease) meat
> production would suffer as much as anything.
> People with diverse vegetarian diets would
> probably be less directly affected than meat
> eaters.

Until the meat-eaters started eating them... Free-range organic vegetable-fed meat. Ummmmmmm.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | August 27, 2007 8:46 PM

If the Chinese and Indians ate meat at the same rate as people here in the US, there'd be no rainforest. With a world population topping off at around 9 billion, eating meat at the rate we do now in the US, there'd be no forests, period, just acres and acres of factory farms.

My guess is rising agricultural productivity will keep us (yet again) from the grip of famine. It seems to me Indian and Chinese farms aren't as productive as those in Britain or Holland. There's plenty of room for improvement. Plus, the rising tide of obesity may eventually (with the help of drugs) begin to reduce caloric consumption. Of coure, adding another several billion people will add to the pressure to open up new farmland, but that will be the case no matter what they eat.

Posted by Nobody | August 27, 2007 9:24 PM

I AM A LUNATIC!!!!

Posted by Neal Murray | August 27, 2007 10:17 PM

I'm a lobster, and I totally have feelings, guys. I'm currently sitting in a tank in a restaurant that's so swanky that even future entrees such as myself have cable internet access. But, you know what? Even though I am going to get boiled alive, then sauteed in a butter sauce for human consumption, I'm not at all angry or depressed. When one has been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas, Oblivion isn't much different from life itself. So eat up! and know that the 15 minutes of culinary satisfaction creatures such as myself will provide you are 15 minutes more real joy than I will experience in my entire life.

Posted by Rock Lobster | August 27, 2007 10:33 PM

Surely the reason gratuitous animal cruelty bothers people more than the run-of-the-mill animal cruelty that goes into eating animals for food is that most normal people do the latter and not the former, and develop their personal moral codes to suit the behavior they're already predisposed to rather than the other way around.

Posted by sean | August 27, 2007 11:35 PM

Just read a line on an unrelated Web site that is appropriate here:

There is plenty of room for all God's creatures on this Earth - right next to the mash potatoes.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 28, 2007 2:39 AM

ZOMG! Richard Steven Hack! That's so clever!

How 'bout "vegetables are what food eats?" Or "if god didn't want us to eat animals, why did He make them out of meat?" Or maybe "Vegetarian -- Indian word for 'lousy hunter.'"

I think I'm turning into a troll. First my attacks on Chris Ford in the Walt/Mearsheimer book thread, now my attacks on Freddie and Richard Steven Hack on this thread. Soon I'll probably be talking about "epic lulz" or something.

Posted by Julian Elson | August 28, 2007 3:02 AM

yes - apart from self-preservation (livestock is the worst environmental polluter regarding land erosion, water depletion and CO2. worse than all the cars and trucks combined) - there are the cruelty and personal health reason for leaving autonomy needing animals alone:

As The Atlantic's Book review by B. R. Myers tell us - Michael Pollan writes in his usual fashion and style - that never feels the need for rational explanation:

"'I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian, the blamelessness of the tofu eater. Yet part of me pities him, too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.'"

May I quote Leo Tolstoy on this matter? In his book 'The First Step' (1892) he writes:

"Not long ago I had a talk with a retired soldier, a butcher, and he was surprised at my assertion that it was a pity to kill, and said the usual things about its being ordained. But afterwards he agreed with me: `Especially when they are quiet, tame cattle. They come, poor things! trusting you. It is very pitiful.'

This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that a man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity -- that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself -- and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!"

I hope it is clear why I pity Mr Pollan too? Dreams of being a wild beast are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.

Mr Pollan does not want to take the "innocent" eating habits of apes like the gorilla as a role model - who can live a long life without killing. He does not look at Socrates, Plato, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, etc.

No - he dreams his "innocent" nightmares of being a wild lion.. the need and rush to kill everyday. Well his innocent dream is dangerous to all of us but that is another story.

Mr Pollan dislikes vegetarians because they remind him that he has a choice between respect for the individual and freedom or not. Animals today are mere modern-day slaves but we do not recognize them as such because we think of them as "products" and objects..

Yes - the cruelty aspect per se is not libertarian. but the love for freedom and autonomy of nature's agents is? if we believe in a free economy and respect for the individual, than we should even more respect free ecology.. ecology is the mother of the economy and not the other way around. and:

working at the roots IS libertarian!

Posted by Hugo | August 28, 2007 3:18 PM

1) I have often found it passing strange that the anti-meat types (the ones with an intellectual and philosophical, rather than dietary, objection) are so often the same people who show their kids those wonderful pbs documentaries where the lions start chowing down on the zebra while the latter is still alive and kicking.

2) "Many practices that were once common and unquestioned (slavery, attacking of neighboring tribes to steal women, rape and looting in battle, the oppression of women, the hunting of whales, the thoroughly wanton killing of songbirds, revenge killings and on and on)"
This is just stupid and uninformed on its face. Yes, most of those practices are now gone in **most modern, western** societies, but they are still out there. Read the papers, for gosh sakes.

Posted by harveykek | August 29, 2007 12:08 AM

harveykek

1) anti-meat is NOT anti lion... the zebra depends on the lions to finish off the weak and sick (nature's euthanasia?). the zebra needs the lion for survival and the lion the zebra - there is no breach of natural laws here... but with too much government.. eh... human intervention - the natural cycle of ecology is broken.. biodiversity decreases, the strength of the gene-pool decreases...

anti-meat is NOT anti-death.. we ALL die.. anti-meat is against slavery, rape, etc. it is basically PRO-FREEDOM

2) yes you are right.. there are laws in the US that CLEARLY state "Thou shall not kill...." (btw - some religious text say explicitly not "kill" and not "murder"..). And yet - the papers are full of homicides... If we were to protect animals by law, ie not allowed to torture them for fun or taste, there will be those who break them nevertheless.. but the point is that the worst crime - the social blindness and institutional slavery will have disappeared.. a benefit we will have a much healthier ecology - just like liberating slaves from plan-economics has produced a richer economy?

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | August 29, 2007 9:25 AM