A sledgehammer blow against the animal's chains

If you have ever observed an argument in favour of vegetarianism, you can be sure that somewhere along the line there will be an accusation of 'emotionality'.

You will see the 'antis' poise the lance of argument at the 'bleeding hearts who have watched one too many Disney cartoons, and now proclaim their love for all beasts!' Vegetarianism is, of course, just an immature emotional reaction to the grim nature of, well, nature. Vegetarians haven't quite clocked on yet that animals must be slaughtered because it is 'the way of things', and if only they were more 'rational' they would realize that animals being killed for food is an unchanging law of the cosmos (insert lion hunting gazelle reference here).

But, of course, slaughtering animals as part of your cultural practice is not the result of an emotional attachment. It is an entirely rational decision to gorge on ever-increasing quantities of meat, resulting in ever-worsening conditions for the animals slaughtered – and just about everything else. Therefore, experiencing as much sensory pleasure and dietary convenience as possible would give one the rational high-ground, right? The answer from my perspective is an overwhelming and horribly jaded 'no'.

I propose a different concept of rational. This is to cause the least amount of suffering and environmental damage for the maximum output of nutrition and variety, from here to an indefinite point in time. It is to consider the future of the earth, rather than just the present. It is to plan ahead to ensure the continued survival of our species - not to mention all of the others we might extinguish before their time. It is not necessarily benevolent, but it certainly is not domineering and destructive. It is quite simply long-term survival and well-being!

Mass violence against harmless animals does not have a rational basis. Violence is destructive to our well-being, even when it is justifiable (i.e. in self-defence). If you agree, then you agree that it is also rational to free people from the barbaric task of animal slaughter. The meat-eating advocate (that is, anyone who condones or participates in the practice) is hiding from the fact that someone else has to do the dirty work. Considering the sheer scale of the meat industry, that is a lot of dirty work.

I doubt the happy family at the table carving a cow-corpse consider the psychological welfare of the men who were tasked with the killing. Those men are as objectified (a walking blade and boltgun) as the innocent animal deemed unworthy of life (walking flesh and food). Even if one cared nothing for animals, could one say the same for men? The same men who must be desensitized to the brutal task of transporting, stunning and killing animals on a factory line. (In the case of halal or kosher slaughter, literally killing a conscious animal with a blade across the neck).

The real emotionality is on the side of the meat-eaters. Sadly, it is the wrong kind of emotion. It is an emotional need to belong to an archaic cultural practice. It is the laziness of convenience, to commit the most banal immorality known to our species. It is to habitually succumb to the darkest of desires, destroying another life for the sake of fleeting pleasure - or worse, arbitrary traditional nonsense. This fusion of emotional need to belong, combined with rampant desiring, is where the irrationality of meat-eating synthesizes.

Fortunately for meat-eaters, they have a many-layered veil to hide behind. The meat industry depends on sheer ignorance to continue itself (a resource reliably supplied by our underachieving species!) It hides the flesh-consumer from the brutal reality of how animals are raised and butchered. It hides behind images of happy cows and pleasant farms, utilizes serpentine language (cage free, free range) or romantic language (calling the corpse of a jungle fowl a 'bird') to disguise the sheer abuse that is necessitated so that we can continue the highly 'civilized' practice of animal torture and murder. It is almost as if a large number of those involved in the slaughter were ashamed of their role in it. But I won't go so far as to say this definitively!

Vegetarianism has its own ethical problems with farmed animals, but it does not depend on anywhere near as much slaughter to continue itself. This makes it an order of magnitude less violent and self-destructive, and an order of magnitude more rational. As for any overly emotional vegetarians, can you really blame them? Even if it is a purely emotional reaction, it is a valid one, and the right one.

This is the first of many sledgehammer blows against the animal's chains. The next article will be asking the question of whether an animal is a moral agent - the predictable answer from this militant animal rights camp being 'yes, I do think so'! The basis of this argument will be the rather simple notion that we are not so different from animals - having evolved 'out' of one after all. See you then.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Anthropomorphism and Nature

The vast and wonderful Greek word in the title is a combination of 'anthropo' meaning human, and 'morphe' or shape. Anthropomorphizing something is to give it human attributes or appearances. For instance, if I was to say that the volcano had something like Elise's temper when it erupted last week, I would be giving this natural phenomena an emotional motive; the fury of Elise. The biggest 'culprits' for this kind of thing can be found in the creatives who dreamed-up their gods, who often just so happened to be shaped like attractive people or cool animal-human hybrids in so many different mythos and religions.

Though I can only speak for the modern mind, I think the following motive explains why anthropomorphism still exists. It comes down to a deep wish that nature was designed for us, filled with hidden meaning for us to discover. This gives nature a mystique, or an extra layer of meaning. As we can never reach or understand this mystique, we never have to see reality in all of it's coldness.

Anthropomorphism makes nature seem like a created order to be enjoyed by us, and used by us. This is problematic because this idea of 'created for' does not imply a sense of the permanent flux we exist in. If something is designed, it implies permanence. If the order of nature is therefore permanent and 'for us', then those who reflect these 'natural values' are of a similar unchanging and entitled mindset. The greatest example of this indirect anthropomorphism can be found in fundamentalist religion's argument from design. It is just ever so slightly silly that Man has created a creator God, and then had Him create nature for Man!

In reality Man is recreating nature in his own image. We have always looked to nature for the correct way to live, or appealed to the word 'natural' as a justifier: the Cynics of ancient Greece spoke of living the way of nature, venerating the loyalty and resourcefulness of the dog; the Taoist sage was said to live the way of nature in a more easy-going sense;

Social 'Darwinists' pick and choose the violent aspects of (our) nature to justify all sorts of capitalist nonsense. Yet now, with the fall of religious belief for so many of us, believing in mother nature is more appealing than it ever has been. As a result, we still anthropomorphize nature, to give it a shape we can identify with. Then we profess to learn from it, taking from it what was never there in the first place.

We also have to quite cynically remember that crafting something into a human shape means it has no value outside of us. If it did have value, why would we need to craft it into human shape in the first place? Why couldn't we stretch our minds to accept or scrutinise something as it actually is, or just feel what is there without the intrusion of prejudice? Anthropomorphism makes things 'human', and of course, only that which reflects humanity can have value. This is nowhere more obvious than the word 'humanity' being used as a positive term: 'Put some flowers up and give the place some humanity' or 'That cow is being treated in an inhumane fashion'. We may use these terms innocently, but their meaning is clear enough. It is the simplest form of prejudice, only reacting positively to something which is similar to yourself. I am not saying that we should be ashamed of our humanity, far from it! Only that we do not need to consider something human, or 'humanized' for it to possess value. This makes any scientific or psychological examination of animals for behaviours similar to us unnecessary for us to consider those animals as valuable. To summarize: animals and plants and natural phenomena do not need to be humanized for us to consider them.

What is there by nature?

I do not know what the actual 'values' in nature are, I must admit it. It seems like a bit of a jungle where animals attract, repel, cooperate, compete, fight, fuck and feed (all-in-one where the praying mantis is concerned). But whatever those 'values', if they exist at all, they do not change with our re-valuation of them. They exist beyond us. We cannot transplant our values upon nature. Even the animals we take into our direct concern, or enslave for use in our archaic industries, are apart from us in that we can never communicate with them in the same way as we can another human being. 

This is not to say that we share nothing with the animal - we do. Animal kinship is extremely important and enriching. It is sharing with an animal something deeply internal in ourselves. We have similar components, and can recognise one another as alive – the most profound recognition possible. A cat for instance can feel a sense of attachment, and so can we. A large spider can recognise you as a threat and duel with you, feeling something similar to you. We 'risen primates' have evolved out of nature after all. The problem is we have also diverged greatly from all other animal life, such that outside of instinct and an understanding of physical pain / pleasure principles, we share nothing with the animal. If we assume that Mr.Cat can 'human love' us back, we are wrong. A cat can only 'cat love', and nothing will alter this fact.

Another problem with anthropomorphism is that it is greatly prejudiced. As children we were all forced to endure humanoid turtles attending to various banal adventures, and we are all familiar with the ubiquitous teddy bear wearing some kind of human pyjamas. But where were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Nematodes? Is the microscopic worm not also worthy of care and consideration - it is after all the main prey of flesh-eating fungi. What about the passion and grief of the sea sponge? It is only recently that we have come close to appreciate such a creature in our artistic output. Anthropomorphism does not give us any universal principle with which we can create a system of ethics. It is only the large-eyed fawn, and the cuddly kitty, and the awe-inspiring bird, and so forth, who we wish to accept into our bosom as being worthy of consideration. Even then we often 'misinterpret' an animal's attributes, and create a false view of it.

The symbolism of animal and plant has soaked itself into our culture. Birds and predators make great mascots or patriotic symbols, representing the values of a nation in all its glory (presumably the lion for its pride and the unicorn for its stiff-upper lip in the case of Britons!) This is the same kind of pick-and-choose attitude toward nature that limits our understanding of it. Whilst it may be artistically and visually impressive, it does not bode well for our minds, or our environmentalists. We need to take nature seriously, and to do this, we need to take a step back from our human prejudices. Besides, which will be the first nation to sport an armadillo in it's colours; is her stern shell and defiant heart not also worthy of patriotic grandeur?

Our strange duality toward animals can be summed up in a single image; the impressive head of a stag upon the wall of a hunter's cabin. Simultaneously the animal is admired, and yet was killed for no real reason at all. A DVD copy of 'Bambi' lies under its lifeless eyes. The hunter's children love animals. Apparently.

As for the animal ethics which may arise in our societies once when we de-anthropomorphize nature, I will save that for my next article on this topic. To summarize: it will concern the way our attitudes change toward plants and animals once we stop seeing them purely in relation to how useful they are to us, but what they are worth in and of themselves.

Selim 'Selim' Talat (the vegetarian anti-anthropomorphism advocate who nevertheless loves the owls and kitties in the Phil Tak newsletter!)