Lots and lots of work to do here at the paper today, so blogging will be light. A friend just put me onto this fascinating site, PostSecret, in which people send in their secrets written on a homemade postcard. The website posts them. For example:
This morning, I wrote in a review of a new book about factory farming that pro-lifers often see pro-choice arguments as sophisticated justifications for maintaining an immoral status quo so people can continue to live exactly as they wish to live. Along those lines (I wrote), it strikes me that the refusal of so many of us, conservatives and otherwise, to deal forthrightly with the moral ugliness of factory farming, plays to the same bad-faith logic. Understand I am not saying that animal life is morally equivalent to unborn human life. Still, I find disturbing parallels between the way many pro-choice advocates defend the legitimacy of a barbaric, dehumanizing practice (it's necessary for the smoothe functioning of society, the embryo isn't human, sexual freedom and women's autonomy demands it, etc.) and the way factory farming defenders justify practices that shock the conscience. Animals don't have rights ... we couldn't feed everybody if we didn't factory-farm ... and so forth. What rarely gets talked about is whether or not it's wrong to treat animals -- even animals we are going to eat -- in the cruel way that factory farming does.
We seem to have collectively decided that we want cheap and plentiful meat, and we're going to do whatever it takes to justify the system that provides it to us. Similarly, we have decided that we want unlimited sexual freedom, and if that means keeping abortion with virtually no restrictions, then we'll do that. Maybe I'm making too much of a parallelism there, but the role of consequentialist thinking in the general approach to these two critical moral issues really does stand out. I.e., if X is wrong, then Y; but Y is unacceptable; therefore, not-X.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I'm vegetarian but not vegan. However, I don't think either veganism or vegetarianism is necessarily morally superior.
For one thing, the ability to have a locally produced veg diet declines the further north you go. Obviously, Inuit can't eat local vegetables, but even Scots and Scandinavians can't eat all that many. Most modern vegan diets are soya-based, yet soya is not grown in the UK, for example, so is imported from Brazil, where it is grown on former rainforest land using semi-slave labour.
Another point is that ploughing kills an enormous number of animals, ground-nesting birds, etc. If you wanted to identify the modes of food production that involve fewest animal deaths, they would be (i) tree crops, and (ii) dairy farming using pasture, without additional feeding.
and it's beautiful to hear about even secondhand. and, paraphrasing MLK, "compassion anywhere leads to compassion everywhere."
to the 11:37 a.m. poster:
your points re vegetable farming are valid. Two practices that address them are:
veganic farming, which uses no insecticides, minimal ploughing, etc., and
freeganism, www.freeganism.org
oops
www.freegan.org
sorry
"Obviously, Inuit can't eat local vegetables, but even Scots and Scandinavians can't eat all that many." - Anon, 11:37 (KJV)
Those Arctic cats who eat their locavore apple pie à l'Esquimaude, might beg to differ; one thing I know, is never try to outuit an Inuit ("'ats a choke, 'at is - I'nuit?" "Dunno; Alaska!" - Cockney Halfuit.)
As for us above the 45th parallel, we'd eat more homegrown greens ourselves, if only we could get the seeds planted in the fifth month to sprout through the ice of the twelfth - but it's a long, long time, from May to December...up here, we don't need to lift weights: just shoveling our great Stakhanovite banks after each week's blizzard is enough to give us brawn after Longfellow's immortal smithy -
UNDER a whistling blizzard blast
The Yooper shovel'r stands;
In Yooper, a mighty man is cast,
Bred from logging and mining lands;
And his crust of remembranc'd pasty repast
Is white as Superior sands.
- and surely, Sherman, you've heard of "ice-ometric" exercise [falls back in cartoon dustcloud]...
To commenter #2--
Tree crops and open pasture dairy farming! YAY!!! I never thought about it that way, but I could easily live on milk and fruit! I've often said so. Who knew it was also environmentally conscious and kind to animals?
Bring on the peaches and cream! With toasted walnuts on the side. This sounds just a little too much like heaven.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.