A Carnivore’s Shame
Bearing in mind the recent seasonal gorging, here’s another Classic Sentence from the Guardian. This time courtesy of Neel Mukherjee and his deep ruminations on vegetarianism.
It slowly dawned on me that there were no rational, intellectual or moral arguments to be made for carnivorousness.
Heavens, he’s bold. There simply isn’t a good reason to partake of the flesh. None whatsoever. I do hope there’s a devastating argument to support such a claim.
The meat-eaters had always already lost. This is not the place to rehearse all those arguments.
Ah. Not the place. Isn’t it wonderful when arguments can be won entirely in your own head, with none of that messy business with evidence, logic and stuff you hadn’t thought of? Mr Mukherjee does, however, indulge us with one attempt at reasoning:
Far more convincing for me than all kinds of shocking exposés of the meat industry and the way a piece of steak makes it way on to our plates… was the unimpeachable moral argument against speciesism: because we are the most powerful animals in the animal kingdom, because all animals are at our mercy and we can choose to do whatever we want with them, it is our moral duty not to decimate, factory farm and eat them. It is an argument of such majesty and generosity that its force is almost emotional.
Note the invention of an entirely new prejudice for those so inclined to feel guilty about – speciesism. Note too the sly conflation of meat eating with factory farming and decimation. This “unimpeachable moral argument” could of course be expressed a little less tendentiously,
Because we can eat animals it’s our duty not to.
But then – amazingly – it loses much of its persuasive force. To say nothing of its majesty.
Yes, it’s easy to mock, but I suspect there’s a serious purpose to outpourings of this kind. It just isn’t the one being affected by the writer and much of his readership. Clearly, the object isn’t to test the moral premise of vegetarianism:
This is not the place to rehearse all those arguments.
Indeed. This is a place for something else – something that for many Guardianistas is much more important. It’s a chance to signal attitudes that are ostentatious, self-involved and most likely dishonest: “Watch me agonise over meat. Look at how concerned I am. See how I fret.” The point is to display The Passion of Neel Mukherjee as he wrestles with temptation:
I still haven’t been able to stop eating meat. In any restaurant, my eyes alight first, as if by an atavistic pull, on the meat dishes on the menu. In any dinner party I throw, I think of the non-vegetarian dish as central. I view this as a combination of weakness, greed and moral failure. Someone please help.
Again, note the key ingredients – gratuitous personal drama and pretentious guilt. This posturing nonsense is pretty much a Guardian staple. Readers may recall Cath Elliott being politically distressed by peanut butter residue, and note the similarities between her dietary drama and that of Mr Mukherjee. Perhaps such things are best understood as a kind of theatre for people who wish to agonise and be seen agonising, so as to indicate just how concerned and moral they are, if only to people who are equally conflicted and pretentious.
Well, the good news is that when one spends his/her time morally vexed about whether one’s chicken marsala had feelings, one doesn’t have to be troubled about other, less important things, like, oh say, Iranian atomic bombs or compulsory female genital mutilation.
BTW, is it just me, or did this Mukherjee just attend the “tautology” lecture in his Logic & Rhetoric class and skip the rest of the semester.
Regards.
“In any restaurant, my eyes alight first, as if by an atavistic pull, on the meat dishes on the menu… I view this as a combination of weakness, greed and moral failure. Someone please help.”
Heh. Maybe he can’t stop eating meat because he likes the guilt so much.
So this guy thinks there are “no rational, intellectual or moral arguments” for eating meat AND he’s convinced by the “unimpeachable moral argument against speciesism”… and he STILL eats meat? How rational is he?
He’s not even a born-again vegetarian. He’s a WOULD BE born again vegetarian.
“He’s not even a born-again vegetarian. He’s a WOULD BE born again vegetarian.”
Quite. Though in fairness to Mr Mukherjee, he makes such a poor case for his own professed moral position it’s hardly surprising he fails to live up to it.
These are the days of Ashura, and flogging oneself publicly is clearly traditional.
Personally, I see a religious argument for eating meat. Animals would not taste so good if our creator would not want us to consume them.
-S
“It slowly dawned on me that there were no rational, intellectual or moral arguments to be made for carnivorousness.”
Protein, efficient consumption of.
“an argument of such majesty and generosity that its force is almost emotional”.
This is an almost perfect phrase. If only Neal had had the courage of his convictions and identified it as *entirely* emotional, he would have hit the bullseye, not shaved it.
And if only I had spelt his name correctly. My bad, Neel.
Simen has it right
If God didn’t want us to eat e.g. pigs, why did he make them out of wonderful bacon butties? Answer me that then would-be veggie!
What’s amusing is how readily Mr Mukherjee dismisses the endless possible counterarguments and concentrates instead on frivolous self-chastisement and calls for intervention: “In any dinner party I throw, I think of the non-vegetarian dish as central. I view this as a combination of weakness, greed and moral failure. Someone please help.”
Maybe he should just present his rear for spanking and have done with it.
“Because we can eat animals it’s our duty not to”
to which one can retort “Because we can breathe, it’s our duty not to.” You first Mr Mukherjee.
Oh dear. Double quarter-pounder with bacon and extra cheese for lunch again it seems. And possibly veal for dinner.
Virtually all of these anti-meat eating screeds at some point employ the “if you knew how your meat got on your plate you wouldn’t eat it” argument. It’s a supremely stupid argument that’s both insulting and unable to stand up to even a superficial comparison to the facts. Of course I know where the steak I’m eating came from. A child can identify what beast the particular cut of meat she’s devouring came from. More importantly farmers represent a large sample of individuals who both had to raise and slaughter their own meat. Percentage of farmers who were vegetarian through out history? Fairly close to zero I’d imagine. Farmers who had the means to raise and consume meat did almost without exception. Some how this group which comprised the bulk of humanity for the the majority of recorded history managed to over come their revulsion of having to slaughter animals to consume meat.
But they didn’t have the opportunity to display their finely honed sensitivities to a fawning Guardian audience.
A lot of people seem to need religion. Discarding the old religions leaves a needful void. Hence, faith-based reasoning on matters of public policy, and new definitions of kosher.
“I view this as a combination of weakness, greed and moral failure.”
So preferring steak over soya is “greed” now?
Well there are fairly conclusive arguments to show that “speciesism” (and, as a corollary, eating meat, for affluent people) are morally wrong, but it doesn’t seem Mr. Mukherjee knows them.
“It slowly dawned on me that there were no rational, intellectual or moral arguments to be made for carnivorousness.”
From the evolutionary point of view, we wouldn’t be humans with all our skills and intelligence if we weren’t hunters and meateaters. These vegans really take the cake in bringing us back into darkness.
I mean, PoMos would bring us back into medieval way of obscurantist thinking, newagers into pagan religions, but vegans want us to be stupid as cattle.
Ed,
“Well there are fairly conclusive arguments to show that ‘speciesism’ (and, as a corollary, eating meat, for affluent people) are morally wrong…”
There are? Feel free to share them.
Hey David,
A well-constructed argument from marginal cases should suffice. I’ve written a small paper with my own little riff on it. I’m happy to send it you, if you’d like?
By all means.
David,
Sent. I hope you can show me I’m wrong as there’s a Chrismas ham downstairs and I so need to be all over that motherfucker.
No, we eat animals because we need the protein and because (some of them anyway) taste pretty good. But also because a grazing animal dying naturally of disease, starvation or consumption by another wild animal dies a protracted death. By contrast, death of the said animal in a modern abbatoir is humane.
Not to end an animal’s life this way is to allow needless suffering.
It was with great trepidation that I trawled through the academic literature during my philosophy masters. Unfortunately I could find no way out and was forced to abandon those tasty practices. From my experience, a significant proportion of analytic philosophy postgraduates and professionals are vegetarians because of those arguments.
I’m with Ed on this one. I’ve been looking for a way out of the marginal cases argument for a long while.
And the arguments are?
Simplius,
I’ve written a small paper with my own little riff on it. I’m happy to send it you, if you’d like?
Why not here? It isn’t something like Monthy Python’s funniest joke in the world,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gpjk_MaCGM , isn’t it?
He’s so brave. Sigh.
Perhaps he can wander out into the jungles and explain to the tiger about it’s carnivorous shame…
I can’t see any moral argument ever being “conclusive” or stopping our species from eating meat. The veggies I know stopped because of things like factory farming not because they think eating animals is morally wrong.
Karen,
“I can’t see any moral argument ever being ‘conclusive’ or stopping our species from eating meat.”
Well, setting aside appeals to sentiment and digestive disgust, you’re basically left with arguments in the abstract. The problem with this academic approach is precisely that it’s abstracted from real world practicality and imperatives, which tends to undermine any claim of moral weight. (Formal abstract arguments tend to presuppose that morality ought to coincide with formal logic, especially logic stripped of realistic detail.) It’s rather like saying, “no-one should starve while others eat pie,” or “in a world without money, people should do X instead of Y.”
It’s hard to imagine broad agreement even on basic terms and propositions, let alone any ascetic conclusions derived from them. I’m sure “meat ethics” can be an interesting academic pastime, but for most of the world that’s all it is and all it’s likely to remain. It’s a rarefied local intrigue. Imagine the prospect of trying to legally enforce some “anti-speciesist” sentiment or global “meat morality.” The implications are either monstrous or comical.
Sigh. David frequently calls our attention to artists engaged in fatuous shenanigans made possible by taxpayer support, and as an artist, it makes me feel apologetic about the vocation. As a vegetarian, please allow me to disown Mr. Mukherjee likewise. From the beginnings of my vegetarianism twenty years ago, it has always been my policy that whatever are the evils of eating meat, they are much lesser than the evils of being an ungracious guest in someone’s home, acting like a prig at the dinner table, or making ostentatious displays of one’s ostensibly superior moral position like Mukherjee, a position in this case not even earned by actual vegetarianism.
My rationale for being a vegetarian is mostly emotional. I’m a mammal, I have mammals as pets, and I don’t like the idea of eating mammals. My feelings about the matter taper as we go down the evolutionary chain, although everything seems to want to live as far as I can tell. I once visited a dam in Oregon and saw salmon struggling up the fish ladder, and the sight made me forswear eating fish for a long while. But it would be idiotic to suggest that because I have these feelings, you should have them too. Rather, it stands to reason that because the continuation of life requires the discontinuation of other lives, one ought to approach the table with a measure of humility and wonder. More than that I won’t assert.
“But it would be idiotic to suggest that because I have these feelings, you should have them too. Rather, it stands to reason that because the continuation of life requires the discontinuation of other lives, one ought to approach the table with a measure of humility and wonder. More than that I won’t assert.”
Well said.
David and Karen: Would arguments against slavery and racism count as conclusive moral arguments?
“I can’t see any moral argument ever being “conclusive” or stopping our species from eating meat. The veggies I know stopped because of things like factory farming not because they think eating animals is morally wrong.”
Karen,
Again, I’m happy to send you mine.
David,
Well, if you think I’m guilty of those things, then it would be great if you could cite some specific examples of things you don’t agree with, think are insufficiently meaningful or think are just plain wrong and explain what you mean as clearly as possible. (Also, I’m painfully aware that this issue can be a little crusty and unfashionable. Nor do I want world Quorn domination!)
Jim,
I suspect arguments against slavery and racism would entail less abstraction and thus be more compelling and more broadly conceded.
Franklin,
Quite. I’ve no great interest in whether (or why) someone chooses to do without meat. Unless they’re coming for dinner, it’s none of my business. It’s Mukherjee’s public pantomime that warranted comment. In a way, his position is actually quite ingenious. He wants the lofty moral adamance of The Righteous and Judgemental Vegetarian while failing to meet the most basic requirement of the role. He even manages to turn his continued meat consumption into a kind of heroic Passion Play, whereby he can invite sympathy for his “weakness, greed and moral failure” – all while maintaining a superior attitude. And he found a mainstream newspaper in which such humbug would be welcomed.
Hell, I’m almost impressed.
Ed,
I don’t recall suggesting you were “guilty” of anything. I wasn’t referring directly to any details of your own paper, which you said wasn’t intended for public consumption. (And I’m not about to parse it on demand without a fee.) It’s simply that the academic approach is typically somewhat technical and idealised and thus unlikely to have a large sociological effect. As tools to inhibit such a basic human function, academic papers – whatever their merit – aren’t the thing to count on for a decisive outcome – i.e. a shift in mass behaviour. As opposed to, say, health concerns or personal disgust, which strike me as more effective.
David,
So arguments against slavery and racism do, in your opinion, count as conclusive moral arguments?
Could you please give me some specific examples of differences of abstraction between these arguments.
Many people are veggies for non-moral or non-rational reasons – which is fine – it just clouds the issue when they get involved with debates on the moral arguments for it. Whether such arguments are sound stands apart from whether people are motivated by them.
David: How about posting Ed’s essay about the morality of meat-eating. I think many of us would love to get a crack at it.
Jim,
“So arguments against slavery and racism do, in your opinion, count as conclusive moral arguments?”
It’s possible we’re talking at cross purposes. Slavery and racism strike me as objectionable – and instinctively so – but I don’t recall a point at which “conclusive” moral arguments were presented to me and accepted. I don’t think that’s how moral understandings – and changes in understandings – are most often arrived at.
To return to your earlier point, the success of a moral argument may hinge not on formal logic but on a sense of moral empathy. Moral empathy with other human beings is, I’d imagine, more likely than with animals (especially those deemed insufficiently fluffy). The further an argument departs from such things – which may not be entirely amenable to rational analysis – the more difficult persuasion may be.
I don’t think I was saying any more than that.
Cambias,
Things sent to me in confidence remain in confidence. But maybe Ed will oblige you with a copy.
David,
If your claim is that good argument does not affect changes in moral understanding then we are, indeed, talking at cross purposes. I was under the impression that you were claiming that arguments against slavery and racism were more compelling than those against speciesism.
Your claim about how changes in understanding are arrived at is of course an empirical and non-moral point. For my part, I was under the impression that changes to the status quo were often effected by good argument.
John Stuart Mill’s influential essay on “The Subjection of Women” and Thomas Paine’s “The Right’s of Man” ware precisely example of that. Don’t you agree?
David,
Oh, sorry, I thought you were referring to my piece. (But by, “not for public consumption”, I meant I hadn’t originally intended to give it out for this purpose. I’m very happy for you to comment on the specifics, should you feel like it. Of course I don’t demand you read it. But you did ask for it!)
I had thought you were saying “anti-speciesist” arguments are not valid/sound. I see now you’re actually saying whether they are or not, they won’t efficiently change people’s attitudes, like more demagogic methods will. Well perhaps. But I guess that, as Jim just said above, is another argument.
Cambias:
You’d love to “get a crack at it”? It’s not a piñata. Anyway, thoughtful input is always good!
http://twentysixh.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/eb_amc.pdf
It falsifies the strong “specisist” view (C in the paper) and then moves to a strong “anti-specisist” conclusion – one that would, at the very least, entail vegetarianism for relatively affluent people.
It’s probably just as well Mukherjee doesn’t eat meat. Can you imagine the angst that would ensue on trying to find the right tomato sauce to accompany his burger?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/29/whole-foods-supermarkets
No “rational, intellectual or moral arguments to be made for carnivorousness.”?
How about at a pinch you can eat animals to keep from dying of starvation …and we are omnivores that come with canine teeth?
However – the absoutely irrefutable argument is the bacon sandwich.. mmmmm
Jim,
“If your claim is that good argument does not affect changes in moral understanding…”
I didn’t say that. And Mill and Paine are good examples of what is possible. I just suggested that in terms of the general population moral worldviews aren’t necessarily arrived at by technical discussion or formal analysis.
“I was under the impression that you were claiming that arguments against slavery and racism were more compelling than those against speciesism.”
Yes, I’d say they are, in part because of the above. Wouldn’t you?
Simply put, I’m not at all sure that morality can successfully be reduced to logical analysis (or extended to the degree that analysis can be). I don’t think that’s what most often drives morality in the sense of the various preferences people have and how they actually behave, or are willing to behave. A great deal of practical morality seems instinctive, unconscious or arrived at by a kind of social osmosis. Reciprocation is perhaps the most obvious consideration, and reciprocal feelings and expectations with other humans – even unfamiliar ones – are, I think, more likely than with unfamiliar animals. A sense of commonality with a random cow is harder to envisage than a sense of commonality with a stranger at the bus queue. And I don’t expect any amount of rationalising to alter that distinction on a meaningful scale any time soon.
There’s also something to be said for appreciating the limits of moralising in general, and specifically what one might realistically (or defensibly) hope to do in terms of whether others perceive animals as potential foodstuff.
David,
Is it the case that the wrongness of racism, slavery and sexism are instinctive and arrived at unconsciously? I think history proves that precisely the opposite is true.
It was painstaking argument by people such as Mill, Paine and many others that led to revolutions in our moral worldview.
Need I remind you that no sense of “commonality” was once felt with some other races and women? Both were believed to be different kinds of beings and, as a consequence, not deserving of the same kind of moral consideration as extended to white males.
The arguments that secured their rights were arguments similar to marginal cases arguments. It seems to me that, despite your lip service, you don’t know what these are.
Franklin said:
“My rationale for being a vegetarian is mostly emotional. I’m a mammal, I have mammals as pets, and I don’t like the idea of eating mammals.”
Franklin, a few questions:
1. What kind of mammals do you keep?
2. What kind of food do you give them?
3. Would you keep mammals like calves, pigs or lambs as your pets?
Jim, do you think meat eating could go the way of slavery based only on moral argument?