It's been too long. I spent all that time thinking about blame (here, here and here) and so how could I leave such a fertile territory?
I was inspired to consider this by an Academy of Ideas podcast in which Frank Furedi - who says much that I agree with - condemned the loose use of moral terms for irrelevant aspects of life like veganism or face-mask-wearing. He also condemned the acts of kneeling in which white Americans have shown support for Black Lives Matter as a horrific portrayal of penitence. Ouch. Susan Neiman was the other panelist in the debate - and she had brought this up as an incredible moving sign of social connection, cohesion and apology. I'm not sure I want to weigh into that. I like the impulse, but am wary of acts of virtue signalling, followed by the return home, of the penitents, to expensive middle class houses in leafy suburbs. That said, maybe a sign is better than nothing. Indeed, given the circumstances, it seems to be the very least - to acknowledge, to express compassion and attempt to express connection. I just hope that there is also a commitment to for a better future.
Anyway, veganism. Let's focus on that. Is it right for vegans to 'shame' non-vegans using moral language? If there is a cause, then is it effective? Let's assume that the vegan is not a sentimental vegan, talking about 'innocent animals'*, but a fully rational vegan who has digested, absorbed and agreed with the arguments against taking sentient lives for human preference and pleasure, when we do not need this food in order to survive at a level of optimal health. Let's assume also that this vegan concurs with the view, put forward by enough supporting empirical research, and by Peter Singer, of course, that higher mammals attain a level of personhood by virtue of being conscious, experiencing pain, suffering and pleasure, and with an awareness of being to some limited extent the ongoing subject of these experiences. For this reason, the vegan sees little moral distinction between such an animal and a human animal with limited consciousness (a very young infant, a severely mentally incapacitated adult or one in a vegetative state, for example) and thus cannot justify the suffering these non human animals are forced to endure or their deaths, in their billions, for our preference, rather than survival. Again, this vegan may also be persuaded by the data-led claim that factory farming contributes greatly to climate change and that the resources freed by feeding water and plants to farmed animals could be used to feed not just those currently fed, but also those humans suffering through a lack of food. If the vegan is committed to these arguments, he cannot help but regard those who have failed to consider their weight and moral validity as unenlightened.
There are, of course, many who disagree. Perhaps they like to kick dogs and swing cats by their tails in the view that non human animals 'do not feel pain' and 'do not experience fear'. This view is wrong according to our best science. Sure, people thought these things in the past. Descartes did. Let's recall that in the past people thought similar things about women, infants and other racial groups than their own. But, over time, we gather more evidence and come to new understandings. It seems to me that what is really the case is not that people believe that cows and sheep are incapable of fear and suffering. It's just that they don't care.
So then the question becomes, why do they not care? Because, I imagine, non human animals are non human. So what confers this special status on humans? That we are humans? I am English, but I don't assume that the English have special status. I am a blue-eyed brunette female. Nothing special about that either. So what is it about humanness that marks it this one species out as a separate category in a way that we no longer mark gender, race, creed or culture? The 'tribal answer' is the only secular answer - and that does not stand up to scrutiny. We are biologically, neurologically and hormonally too similar to other mammals. So, it must be that humans have divine God-given souls. I wonder at what stage of our evolution from whatever other Homo species souls were injected into us? Or maybe Homo erectus had a soul? Homo habilis? What about Neanderthals? I can't take this seriously.
Besides which, all this speciesism fails to counter the environmental argument. You like beef stew, so wave farewell to future generations of your precious soul-carrying humans because the planet won't support them.
As it happens, though I believe in all this - but am a hypocrite as I eat cheese from my brother and sister-in-law's artisan cheese shop - I never feel inclined to condemn meat eaters.
Does that layer hypocrisy on hypocrisy? Maybe. Am I just too afraid of being seen as judgy** and generating ill-feeling, like that expressed with some contempt, by Furedi? Certainly.
There's another reason. I think that this viewpoint, the veganism argument, will in time become the majority view. Just as we have (largely) overcome our prejudices to other humans and seen the connections between us more clearly than the the things that separate us, so too we will expand the circle of empathy to incorporate other sentient beings. Let's face it, our work on prejudices to each other really is still more a work-in-progress than the done deal. But let's remember too that some groups - members of eastern religions - already do regard all creatures as precious, not just human ones. Right now, I do think there is a place to state reasons, but those who do must expect that such arguments will arouse a very defensive response in listeners who don't buy into the story. They will be defensive in part because the arguments, even stated flatly, factually, seem to imply a moral failing on their part - and when people 'feel' that they are being condemned, well, the normal response is to fight back with three times the ferocity. For that reason, adding moral language to the debate will only polarise it further and make it even less palatable.
Massimo Pigliucci explained that he was persuaded to cut down his meat consumption by 90% after reading the arguments and then watching a few videos which document the suffering of animals in factory farms. This is a stage of moral education and development. One is not an idiot before one knows the arguments and the facts; one is not brutal if one hasn't been exposed to the reality that one's choices sustain. Afterwards, well, it may be that the arguments and the facts fail to persuade and the images of suffering fail to move. Or, the arguments may be accepted, the suffering too, but one may elect to indulge one's preference for meat nonetheless. People do not always choose to act morally, even when they believe that a certain course is the moral one. We are, after all, none of us saints. But I think there is a strong claim that this issue is an ethical one and that we should be encouraged to consider it us such - and then we can justify our own cheese-eating and the meat-filled pet food that fills our cupboards to ourselves. OK, maybe only to myself. Not to Peter Singer.
Back to the issue of being 'judgy'. And here's my take. I don't really think it's my place to judge others. I have views. I have reasons for those views. I think there is an ethical argument here. But I am not going to throw stones. After all, the cheese, the pet food.
Still, if others feel more strongly, if this is the hill they would die defending, just as the Suffragettes fought for women and Martin Luther King for Black Americans, just as those on Tiananmen Square and Kiev's Maidan fought for their freedom, so I respect the right of vegans to stand up for non human animals and for the environment.
But I am very persuaded by Daniel Kaufman's views in this podcast, in which he cites Susan Wolf's interesting article on Moral Saints. I think I want to think more on this though and write about it in another post.
NOTE
*On the 'innocent' animals thing. Look, I love non human animals - both generically and in specific cases of individuals. However, it is not my love for them that inclines me not to eat them. It is not sentiment, with which I have little sympathy, but the rational arguments. I am perhaps strange in that I see no difference between eating a pig and a monkey, a cow or a dog, a sheep or a cat, a chicken or a song thrush. Or indeed between a goat and a baby. It seems odd to me that people who will happily eat cows, sheep, pigs, baulk at eating cats, dogs, bunny rabbits - or babies. I just can't understand how this goes beyond, 'I like purple things so I won't eat aubergines.' Further, I can't understand how people can eat unsourced meat yet disapprove of bull-fighting or throwing donkeys off buildings in a religious festival. All are unethical to me - though the last gains an extra level of horror.
**Theodore Dalrymple, perhaps unsurprisingly, condemns the modern trend not to judge. He says that nowadays the only way to show compassion for another person is to agree with whatever they say. The Zeitgeist insists upon always seeing things through someone else's eyes and to disagree or criticise is perceived as an egregious act of aggression.
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