“…we are surrounded by an enterprise of
degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich
was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end,
self-regenerating, bringing [animals] ceaselessly into the world for the
purpose of killing them” (119).
This excerpt, taken from Elizabeth Costello’s lecture, “The Philosophers
and the Animals” illustrates the idea that humans are committing violations
equal to that of the Third Reich, in their harsh slaughter of animals for food
purposes. She makes an interesting
and valid point when she maintains that we deemed the Germans inhumane because
of a kind of “willed ignorance” on their part about the slaughter of the Jews,
and then argues that the major crime of the Holocaust was the way in which the
Nazis treated humans like animals.
However, Elizabeth formulates a controversial argument when she compares
all humans to the Nazis in our slaughter of animals- that we mercilessly raise
and kill innocent animals, and then walk away feeling that our conscience is
still clean.
At first, I was
a little taken aback and somewhat angered by her comparison between the Nazis
treatment of the European Jews and our treatment of animals, because it was
hard to imagine that in eating meat, I was helping to perpetuate a process that
was equal, or worse, than the Holocaust.
However, upon reading more of the lectures, I realized that this was
probably due to this accepted philosophical belief that humans are, in a sense,
morally superior, because of the notion that humans have abilities that humans
do not have, such as abstract reasoning and fear of death (144-145). Some of the audience even used the
religious argument, that man was the only being created in the image of God, to
prove man’s superiority and therefore the acceptability of slaughtering
animals.
Elizabeth
Costello counters these arguments.
She maintains that using the inability of animals to speak/reason as a
justification for their inferiority and prove that humans are the only people
over which we don’t have the power of life and death highlight the falsity of
the argument (151-152). She
asserts, “…in history, embracing the [superior] status of man has entailed
slaughtering and enslaving a race of divine or else divinely created beings and
bringing down on ourselves a curse” (154). This quote seemed especially interesting when looking at previous
subjects and atrocities committed through out history. We can argue that the
slaughter of animals does not matter because of their inferior status, but
haven’t humans used this justification all through out history to legitimize
the torture and destruction of entire groups of people? The “inferior intelligence” and
“unclean” argument that we use when justifying the slaughter of animals seems
awfully similar to that used by the Nazis in exterminating the Jews, and in
genocides committed through out history.
The idea of a superior status has been utilized in justifying the
Americans’, and other groups’, atrocious treatment of entire groups of people
through out history.
When looking at
it this way, it does not seem so ridiculous to compare the daily massacre of
animals to that of the Jews in the Holocaust. Each day we raise animals and herd them into abusive
conditions only to kill them later for our own enjoyment. We too close our
hearts to sympathy for these creatures, just as they did so many years ago.
We claim that
humans are superior because of our reason and intelligent skills, but we seem
to be the only beings that terrorize and kill other members of our own species
because of ideas like “ethnic cleansing” and as a source of entertainment, as
in the torture at Abu Ghraib.
While I felt the
comparison was a little far-fetched in the beginning, I was surprised to find
myself recognizing the reason behind her arguments. However, I wonder how much of an effect these arguments can
really have on people. The process
of killing animals has become so institutionalized and accepted, as have other
forms of mass violence through out history, that I wonder if it is possible to
really get people to change their views and habits. Is it a fight worth
fighting? While I accept her
arguments, I realize how easy it would be to continue to close our hearts to
sympathy and just go on with life eating meat, because it tastes good and
provides nutrients that we are told we need. I recognize the atrocious conditions in which we subject
animals, but found myself struggling with the right action to take after this
acknowledgement.
In reading Maddie’s post, I found that many of the thoughts I had throughout the Coetzee reading are thoughts Maddie also had. When Maddie asks if it is possible to really get people to change their views and habits and is it a fight worth fighting, I had been asking myself the same question. To some extent it even connected to our two prior units, what fights are worth fighting and to what extent to we justify our action or inaction? While eating meat, for some, is much less extreme than say ending torture in war or the racial inequality and mass incarceration occurring in our country, to some extent they function on the same level. Those who believe animals’ rights don’t matter seem to be using the superior status of man over others as a basis for their argument. While animals are not human, we take away their “animal qualities” by putting them in small cages, feeding them through tubes and not allowing them to have a life prior to killing them for our own consumption; prisoners of war are put into cages, have their lives taken from them in order for us to gain information for our protection, much like a form of consumption.
ReplyDeleteWe cage animals so that humans have cheap food to eat and plenty of it and this is a form of control in which man demonstrates their superior status to others. Connecting to our unit on torture in war, our rights and safety here at home are more important than those in the countries we are at war with, and therefore we will dehumanize them in order to keep our “superior” status. The extent to which we use different kinds of “reason” to justify our actions of dominance over others appears to be one of the ideas Coetzee strives to make sense of in her argument comparing the holocaust and animal consumption.
The question Maddie asks is a question I have been thinking about a lot, as a person caring about all of the issues I have mentioned above, but I seem to be asking the question: to what extent is it reasonable that one person can really create change? However as Coetzee states “We understand by immersing ourselves and our intelligence in complexity. There is something self-stultified in the way in which scientific behaviorism recoils form the complexity of life (159).” Therefore it seems as though Coetzee would suggest that a simple answer is, in fact, not the answer. Living and figuring out the complexities of life is the only way in which one can begin to grapple the complex question about human morals, animal rights and to what extent one can effectively change a state in which humans (in our case western humans) hold themselves as superior to all other kinds of people and things.