An Animal’s Place (2002)
michaelpollan.com
An Animal’s Place (2002)
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Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#2This documentary is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko (Dominion, released in 2018, unfortunately requires signing into youtube due to age retrictions)
Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#3Of 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 (His argument that ruminants are ecologically beneficial is also very outdated; raising cows in particular is a major environmental problem.)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.
Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#4Nature 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.
Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#5Nature 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…
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.
Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#6Of 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 er…
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.
Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#7Nature 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…
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 ar…
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.
Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#8Of 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 er…
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.
Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ar…
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.
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.
Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)
#10Pollan 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.