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Remove an Omnivore's Statue? Debate Ensues over the Legacy of Factory Farming
- aero-glide2 5y agoCompared to traditional methods, factory farming has less emissions so it's (relatively) better for environment. Of course avoiding meat altogether is even better. https://youtu.be/F1Hq8eVOMHs https://youtu.be/F1Hq8eVOMHs
- giantg2 5y agoI think the ethical concern here is the treatment of the animals, not emissions.
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- Zababa 5y agoI was very confused reading the article and then looking for "Jerry Whittaker" and finding no information online. Then I saw the date at the beginning: "February 21st, 2167, The New York Daily". To me, worrying about what people will think in ~135 years seems a bit silly. 2167 is about as distant to today as was 1885. Nobody from that time is alive, we had since two world wars, flight, space exploration, computers, the internet, smartphones. While some historical figures are "cancelled" for their opinions, I'm not aware of people stopping to use what they developped because of that. If I contribute in any way to humanity, and in 135 years people want to cancel me but keep using what I've done because it's valuable, that would be fine with me. In a way, this feels like a derivative of Roko's Basilisk: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk, Pascal's wager or (my favorite) Pascal's mugging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging. My view on that is that I'm always impressed by how smart people manage to trap themselves by thinking too much about the future.
- sweetheart 5y agoThe point isn’t to be thinking about the future, but instead using it as a thought experiment to deeply examine the present. It’s a useful tool as it allows us to understand that as clearly as we feel something may not be wrong, we could be waaaaay of the mark. In this case they are saying that of how we treat animals today, which I agree with: how we treat animals today is indeed nothing short of an agonizing genocide with no end in sight, not to mention how it ruins the planet for us and the millions of other species we are neighbors with. The problem isn’t in the future. The problem is here with us today. You just need to see that.
- Zababa 5y agoI mean, you could easily make the opposing argument and say that in 2167, people would remove statues of <prominent animal rights fighters> because while they were fighting for animal rights, humans were still suffering. And you could even do the same with people in 2167 removing the statue of <people too busy arguing about the best course of action instead of actually taking action, anything>.
- adriand 5y agoIt seems you’re firmly putting yourself in the second category. I’ll take the risk of landing in the first one.
- Zababa 5y agoI am, yes. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear about that before, but in no way I think that what I'm doing is better than what other people are doing. When I question the priority of human and animal welfare, I do it from a position of curiosity, not of superiority. My point is that if you want to convince me that animal welfare should be the thing to focus on right now, articles like that aren't helping, since they can easily be replicated to defend other positions.
- sweetheart 5y ago
- nmca 5y agoThis might want a [satire] note in the title?
- sparsely 5y agoI don't think it's satire at all - it's an earnest attempt to imagine how we might look back on current practices in the future.
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- raxxorrax 5y agoNot a native speaker, but I believe choosing the term 'omnivore' hint at least to a certain detachment to the position brought forward.
- trhway 5y ago>It was well known the horrors of the factory farming system in Whittaker's time yet he continued to engage in an omnivorous lifestyle. profound lack of empathy and indifference have been a major obstacle for the human civilization progress. The earlier it gets addressed the better.
- wott 5y agoNeeds a (2167) note in the title.
- sweetheart 5y agoI love this. It’s so wonderful to be confronted so clearly with the realization that so many of us are nestled deeply and comfortably in The Wrong Side of History. Here’s to changing that, one day at a time.
- ReptileMan 5y agoTasty tasty wrong side of history.
- sweetheart 5y agoNever heard that one before!
- pawelmurias 5y agoKeep in mind that in the past do-gooders where trying to make the world a "better" place by burning witches (which was considered an act of compassion philanthropists engaged in) and in more recent times burning Jews
- sweetheart 5y agoHow is that relevant? Do you think that’s what people who are advocating for animal liberation are doing? If so, how?
- JohnWhigham 5y agoYou're getting lost in the specific example and missing their point: there's plenty of people that thought they were going to be on the Right Side of History despite doing heinous things judging by today's standards. It's all relative.
- sweetheart 5y agoJust because they thought they were right doesn’t mean they were, though… Yes, some people can be wrong.
- blueflow 5y agoI would consider the iconoclasm currently going on in the US as off-topic for HN.
- dotsam 5y agoThis is a (very) short story imagining a future where our current practices of factory farming and meat-eating are regarded with the same horror as we currently regard slavery. The piece was submitted as part of a creative writing competition to "inspire someone to find out more about effective altruism, whether that means the whole movement or a single idea/cause area/intervention." https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JFiHewypFB2niuy2G/ea-forum-creative-writing-contest-usd22-000-in-prizes-for https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JFiHewypFB2niuy2G/...
- bencollier49 5y agoThe author has done very well here. Half the audience seem to think that the piece is a damning indictment of modern culinary habits, and the other that it's a wonderful takedown of modern iconoclasm. Full marks! Science fiction done right.
- Swenrekcah 5y agoThe third group might think both are true. Factory farming with all it's animal cruelty and antibiotic bonanza is terrible. Persecuting people for conforming to societal norms and attempting to erase history is also neither smart nor good.
- pasabagi 5y agoStatues were about, and have always been about, celebrating individuals, groups, and values. That's how they functioned in the greco-roman world. That's how they function today. In this context, it totally makes sense to remove statues that don't reflect current values. That's why people toppled statues of Stalin, or Saddam Hussein. This whole talking point about 'history erasure' is just really strange, because monuments have never been about history. That's why you can have a statue of liberty, a fourth plinth, the kryptos, etc.
- Swenrekcah 5y agoThat is true, and I generally don’t mind the removal of those kinds of statues of political or military figures celebrated by one society at one time and looked upon in horror by a new society at another time. What I do mind is the removal of monuments of persons celebrated for specific civilian accomplishments because of some political ideologies, typical of their times, that they may have held (and even, depending perhaps on circumstances untypical of their times).
- scoopertrooper 5y agoI think that'd have to be something decided on a case by case basis. A brilliant physicist who also happened to write a letter to a journal in support of phrenology? I can let that pass. A prolific philanthropist who made his fortune on the backs of the enslaved? Yeah, that can go.
- GuB-42 5y agoIt is great that it can be interpreted two ways. As a way to show how terrible factory farming is and the status quo is the only reason we are accepting that. As a critique of the "cancel culture" where we can't praise someone who saved 5 million lives because he did things that aren't socially acceptable today.
- giantg2 5y agoPerhaps also the irony that the additional population from the lives saved may have contributed to the resource constraints that drove the elimination of meat and lead to this outcome.
- NeoTar 5y agoAn interesting visit if you are ever in Berlin is the “Unveiled. Berlin and its Monuments” exhibition in the Spandau Zitadelle. https://www.zitadelle-berlin.de/en/museums/unveiled/ https://www.zitadelle-berlin.de/en/museums/unveiled/ It houses at least three era of statues which have been removed by past generations - - Figures of the history of Brandenburg, erected during the German imperial era and removed by the National-socialist regime, - National-socialist statues, removed during the process of de-nazification, - Communist statues from the DDR era, removed post re-unification.
- raxxorrax 5y agoMaybe we should put up the NS statues again because Hitler was a vegetarian? (He wasn't, although he didn't smoke).
- tshanmu 5y agoIs comparing "being an omnivore" with being involved in slave trade fair? maybe it is but still I find it hard to digest the comparison... but again is it relevant to HN? edit - corrected some punctuation
- ben_w 5y agoDepending on the answer to the question “Do livestock have the same sort of rich inner world we decry the suffering or destruction of when considering a human animal?”, it’s either an apt comparison to bring about much needed change, or an offensive slight against the suffering of so many humans. I don’t know which.
- WithinReason 5y agoSomeone will likely remove your statue in the future while referring to this comment.
- alignItems 5y agoThe argument that we can’t judge people in the past for their roles in slavery because it was acceptable in their time is based on a flawed assumption that humans have changed how they feel about slavery. They did not. No one ever thought it was great to be a slave, or to have family members enslaved. No one ever thought it was acceptable to have members of their own race/country/identity-group enslaved. Meat eating isn’t the slavery of today. The slavery of today is the slave labour camps that still operate in some countries, the human trafficking that still happens in many places. No one thinks it’s right, just many think it’s not their problem.