11 ms·

An Animal’s Place (2002)

rewq4321 5y ago
This documentary is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko (Dominion, released in 2018, unfortunately requires signing into youtube due to age retrictions)
- yboris 5y ago
  My favorite documentary is Earthlings http://www.nationearth.com/ http://www.nationearth.com/
adriand 5y ago
Of 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 (His argument that ruminants are ecologically beneficial is also very outdated; raising cows in particular is a major environmental problem.)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.
- anthony_d 5y ago
  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.
- simiones 5y ago
  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.
  - sweetheart 5y ago
    Applying questions of the morality of eating meat to obligate carnivores makes no sense; there can be no moral question if there isn’t an option between two paths. Obligate carnivores MUST eat meat, so whether or not they “should” makes no sense to ask. Humans are not obligate carnivores, though, which is morally relevant. We can hold human beings to a standard (don’t eat animals if you can avoid it) but not carnivores to the same specifically because we have a choice and they do not.
m12k 5y ago
Nature 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.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  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.
  - anthony_d 5y ago
    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.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      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.
sweetheart 5y ago
Pollan 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.
- Asooka 5y ago
  I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cultures who did it. Western society has decided that the dog is a beloved companion, but a person who did not grow up indoctrinated to think that way would have no qualms about eating one, save for the fact that you get a lot less meat out of one than what you put in, plus the fact it can probably serve you better alive. You can see a similar parallel in people's attitudes to eating rats - some may be revolted at eating such a dirty animal (similar to how some cultures feel about pigs), some would be aghast at eating a beloved pet (similar to how you feel about dogs), and some wouldn't really mind it. At the end of the day, every living thing on this planet - every tree, every plant, every mushroom, every fish, every insect and every mammal dies and is eaten. I absolutely agree with you on the factory farms though - humanity should strive to not cause other creatures to suffer.
yboris 5y ago
Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975) is a must-read book. Almost 50 years since its publication, it's still relevant - provides a solid argument in favor of reducing one's meat consumption.
andersonbd1 5y ago
Try "The difference of man and the difference it makes", by Mortimer J. Adler
Slade1 5y ago
This is my opinion and it's definitely not steadfast set in stone: while I think people who don't consume meat are potentially more morally virtuous than omnivores, I don't think it is a moral obligation not to consume meat. I think there is much to be desired in terms of changes to mass farming practices, but the fundamentals of my beliefs are that we are not in the same moral and social contracts with animals as we are with other people. There are significantly different ramifications for squashing a bug, a dog, and a person (for example, but not as rationale). Is a pig, cow, chicken, or ANY given sentient creature able to comprehend and abide by the rules of morality we enforce on each other? Does a bear think about the moral ramifications of mailing a hiker? If a creature can demonstrate this an a willingness to abide by our morality, it should be brought into the fold of our social contracts and be given rights on par with humans. This doesn't mean it is morally justified to 'needlessly' kill or 'uncessesarily' reduce the well being of animals (what is needless or unnecessary are highly contextual and loose terms). Torturing of animals is a pretty clear example of something unnecessarily harmful and immoral without clear benefit. Ideally, animals unable to abide by moral codes are still granted certain minimal rights and protections, but are not privy to the set of rights and protections we grant each other.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  You mean "mauling a hiker" right? I agree with your comment and others have made that point: animals don't have any concept of rights, or wrongs, or duties, which can only be understood, and bestowed upon animals by humans. There are rights recognised to humans, like the right to own property or the right to vote in democratic societies, that animals would not be capable of exercising even if we granted them those rights and that alone makes absurd the idea of granting rights to animals modelled after the rights of humans. And even the basic rights, like the right to life, that it would make sense to grant animals, are not anything that animals themselves would be able to understand, or uphold, and they would immediately violate those rights by killing other animals, as cats will kill birds and small mammals without any consideration of their "rights" or any kinds of wrongs.

This documentary is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko (Dominion, released in 2018, unfortunately requires signing into youtube due to age retrictions)

yboris 5y ago
My favorite documentary is Earthlings http://www.nationearth.com/ http://www.nationearth.com/

adriand 5y ago

Of 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.

anthony_d 5y ago
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.
simiones 5y ago
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.
- sweetheart 5y ago
  Applying questions of the morality of eating meat to obligate carnivores makes no sense; there can be no moral question if there isn’t an option between two paths. Obligate carnivores MUST eat meat, so whether or not they “should” makes no sense to ask. Humans are not obligate carnivores, though, which is morally relevant. We can hold human beings to a standard (don’t eat animals if you can avoid it) but not carnivores to the same specifically because we have a choice and they do not.

m12k 5y ago

Nature 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.

user-the-name 5y ago
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.
- anthony_d 5y ago
  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.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    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.

sweetheart 5y ago

Pollan 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.

Asooka 5y ago
I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cultures who did it. Western society has decided that the dog is a beloved companion, but a person who did not grow up indoctrinated to think that way would have no qualms about eating one, save for the fact that you get a lot less meat out of one than what you put in, plus the fact it can probably serve you better alive. You can see a similar parallel in people's attitudes to eating rats - some may be revolted at eating such a dirty animal (similar to how some cultures feel about pigs), some would be aghast at eating a beloved pet (similar to how you feel about dogs), and some wouldn't really mind it. At the end of the day, every living thing on this planet - every tree, every plant, every mushroom, every fish, every insect and every mammal dies and is eaten. I absolutely agree with you on the factory farms though - humanity should strive to not cause other creatures to suffer.

yboris 5y ago

Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975) is a must-read book. Almost 50 years since its publication, it's still relevant - provides a solid argument in favor of reducing one's meat consumption.

andersonbd1 5y ago

Try "The difference of man and the difference it makes", by Mortimer J. Adler

Slade1 5y ago

This is my opinion and it's definitely not steadfast set in stone: while I think people who don't consume meat are potentially more morally virtuous than omnivores, I don't think it is a moral obligation not to consume meat. I think there is much to be desired in terms of changes to mass farming practices, but the fundamentals of my beliefs are that we are not in the same moral and social contracts with animals as we are with other people. There are significantly different ramifications for squashing a bug, a dog, and a person (for example, but not as rationale). Is a pig, cow, chicken, or ANY given sentient creature able to comprehend and abide by the rules of morality we enforce on each other? Does a bear think about the moral ramifications of mailing a hiker? If a creature can demonstrate this an a willingness to abide by our morality, it should be brought into the fold of our social contracts and be given rights on par with humans. This doesn't mean it is morally justified to 'needlessly' kill or 'uncessesarily' reduce the well being of animals (what is needless or unnecessary are highly contextual and loose terms). Torturing of animals is a pretty clear example of something unnecessarily harmful and immoral without clear benefit. Ideally, animals unable to abide by moral codes are still granted certain minimal rights and protections, but are not privy to the set of rights and protections we grant each other.

cheese_goddess 5y ago
You mean "mauling a hiker" right? I agree with your comment and others have made that point: animals don't have any concept of rights, or wrongs, or duties, which can only be understood, and bestowed upon animals by humans. There are rights recognised to humans, like the right to own property or the right to vote in democratic societies, that animals would not be capable of exercising even if we granted them those rights and that alone makes absurd the idea of granting rights to animals modelled after the rights of humans. And even the basic rights, like the right to life, that it would make sense to grant animals, are not anything that animals themselves would be able to understand, or uphold, and they would immediately violate those rights by killing other animals, as cats will kill birds and small mammals without any consideration of their "rights" or any kinds of wrongs.