moral consumption

[quotidians]

In early January I read Consider the Lobster, an essay by David Foster Wallace, in which he examines the neurological anatomy of lobsters and explores a few arguments on whether it is morally defensible to inflict suffering on a living organism because we've got a taste for its protein, finally arriving at an inconclusive answer. You can find the essay online quite easily, but what really stuck out to me were the deliberations on whether lobsters could truly suffer due to their lack of a prefrontal cortex, or only feel neurological pain/"discomfort at not being at the optimal temperature". Below are some reflections I wrote in my personal server:

This was an interesting read because the arguments rested on the infliction of suffering, instead of any inherent wrong in consuming meat (which I have always been wholly unconvinced by), and so it was aligned with my preconceived belief system. I've known of the unethical practices of factory farming for many years, but I have consciously chosen to continue consuming products of this practice for nothing but pleasure (one could argue for physical health as well, but I could just as easily get my protein from alternative sources).

It's in my interest to believe that more primitive and inarticulate organisms (such as fish and crustaceans) do not have the capacity to suffer, because it allows me to consume without adding any weight to my conscience. But I know for a fact that there’s research pointing to the contrary, I've cycled and planted tanks and observed the entire life cycles of corydoras catfish over years, and I've gone jigging on the open sea and struggled against hefty cabezons, so I know damn well that fish are able to feel fear beyond the simple impulse to live and reproduce. I've not succeeded in working out any sort of place in my ethical system in which that belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.

It's part of the reason why I'm fully in favour of lab-grown meat. If we could grow meat that is identical to organic meat (same taste, fibrous texture, protein content and all) without any of the animal suffering caused by factory farming at around the same cost, are there any real downsides to it? There's the argument that it "goes against nature" of course, but I personally see that as fear going against logic; after all, haven't we already gone against nature by modifying crops through tens of thousands of years of agriculture? Now that we have the technology to do so more efficiently, why shouldn't we take one of the oldest human activities to its logical conclusion? (I've a similar outlook on GMO crops, where my only gripe with implementation is that patenting screws farmers over).

On how distance allows us to permit suffering:
Perhaps it's because lobsters are so physiologically different to me that I feel a sort of cognitive dissonance when faced with the fact of their suffering, but I also consume other products that are well-known to be sourced unethically, such as chocolate and coffee. Which begs the question of whether I also feel less affected by the circumstances in which these products are made because of my geographical & cultural distance to the exploited West African farmers who produce them. Obviously I'm aware that individual consumers have almost no sway over global supply chains, but I'm making a conscious choice in purchasing any product, so the point still stands.

On hypocrisy:
I've often felt disdain for girls who squealed and hid at the presence of a spider and asked me to kill it for them and indignantly thought "why should an innocent organism die for your comfort?" But aren't I a hypocrite for producing demand for the confinement and butchering of cattle just because I like the taste of a sirloin steak?

Comments

[comix64]

the world is neutral, i think. there's no such thing as "jinxing it" by talking out loud about hope or any "well, at least...", i think. notice all these i thinks. i have no affirmative evidence here, so some salt is recommended. but anyway, i think that inflicting pain on lobsters et. al. is entirely necessary. i mean, if you can make painless meat, sure, go ahead. painless meat is good for the lobster. if some animals stopped being killed, i assume they'd drive some other animals to extinction. even if humanity stopped killing, the other animals would continue on it anyway. its in their nature. its a fundamental part of the world. i won't say mass slaughter is keeping population in check, but animals seem to be in balance other than when poached. after all, to mass slaughter you need to mass breed. is this a good thing, too? no. i won't put myself in the shoes of a pig born for consumption and claim it would be a good life. i think humans are distanced from the psyches of animals, for sure. there's no way to be certain about the minds of them. obviously, they exhibit fear of death and pain, but every living thing does that. since the dawn of the cell there has been duplication and subtraction. i think this is just how it is. i think nobody should specifically seek out and kill every living thing, but some killing of livestock is necessary. does this sound cruel? yes. is this cruel? yes! killing things is cruel! but killing things is necessary until some day where every living thing only dies of old age. and this will be a good day. but this day would involve some other plan for the parasites and diseases that can only live off of other living things. animals are afraid of death, so we shouldn't kill them. it's at least a little more than mean to kill something. it's immoral. somehow there is a space between immoral slaughter and justified killing. somewhere there is a difference between killing fearful things and being cruel and killing fearful things and killing things out of necessity, or some other way of killing morally. where is the line? i couldn't tell you. im not at the front lines of that war. i honestly could not tell you a stark difference between cruelty against creatures and necessary consumption. it unfortunately just is that we must be cruel to live, i think. the world is neutral, i think.

irreversibility

[quotidians]

Yeah, I never believed that birth, death and the act of killing have any inherent moral quality to begin with, natural order and all that. It could as well be thought of as a tradeoff: livestock have managed to make up the majority of mammalian biomass on the planet only through association with humanity, and because we create the conditions for mass breeding and mass slaughter through industrial agriculture the species we domesticated easily satisfies the biological imperative. I was always more interested perfecting the process to minimize suffering (though this has essentially been achieved already, and whether elimination of suffering, or bringing about a day where old age is the only cause of death should be an end goal is a question in itself. you could argue it removes the reality of nature in the interest of being humane. I digress.) in any case, though I believe the criticisms levied against mechanized slaughter are quite important and that systems can always be improved, I feel that it's ultimately fruitless to lament the realities of a system that can't be unmade without global collapse (just as we can't undomesticate cattle, or undevelop the Haber process). If we released all our livestock today they would destroy all natural ecosystems, supply chains would break down, entire nations would experience famine, etc. The modern, globalized world only came into being on the implementation of industrial agriculture. After all, no other process could have brought about and sustained a human population of 8.3 billion.