In a discussion the other day I argued that some mentally challenged human beings ought to be considered morally similar to nonhuman animals. Therefore, I reasoned, lest we be demonstrably arbitrary, which is anathema to justice according to most (read impartiality), any experiment, for example, in which we are willing to exploit a bunny rabbit for our ends, we ought to be equally willing to do the same to a mentally challenged infant. I did not argue this so much as a defense of experimentation but as a means to challenge those undefended and indefensible assumptions we generally make without even realizing it.

The individual I was speaking with responded as follows:

“Well,” she said, “the argument is that humans are some how better than animals.”

This, of course, was not accompanied by a defense of this “argument” because rarely are we challenged, thus we don’t think. It was an assumption stated as fact. Argument? Of course not. Mere statement? Yes.

Reasoning by example can help us deflect any “arguments” offered as support for this statement, so let’s try one (a very brief description):

Can we justify forcefully impregnating a cow on the “rape rack,” in the parlance, taking her baby away, milking her on an assembly line until “dry,” and repeating this process over and over and over again until she is “spent.” After which she is transported in a tightly confined space over long distances - she’s often not given water or food throughout transportation because it “spoils” her flesh - until she arrives at the slaughterhouse where she will be prodded up the line to her inevitable destination: death by bolt gun, electrocution, or the knife.

And what of her many children? The baby boy cows are purchased by the veal industry to become products in their detestable machine, while the girls are fattened to weight, not on milk of course but “feed,” and returned to take their mothers’ spot on the rape-pregnancy-birth-re-rape-etc. assembly line.

Why must this occur: Because we like the taste of dairy ice cream versus non-dairy ice cream. It’s just that simple. In this ethical calculus, then, we have two competing interests: A) taste - “I like the taste of milk in my coffee” - and B) not suffering - “I have a fundamental interest in not being in pain; in giving my milk to my children; in being able to touch my mother when I am born; in not bleeding out when my throat is slit.”

Since this process involves a tremendous amount of suffering, and because we are thinking, reasoning creatures, we have to justify forcing these experiencing beings to live this life we create for them. Let’s try inserting our statement then: “Well, the argument is that humans are some how better than animals.”

Does that work?

As an aside, the pathetic, the unjustifiably narcissistic, Anthony Bourdain wrote,

“Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.”

Mr. Bourdain, then, apparently believes that infantilizing our reasoning, which concludes with arguments like, “Humans just have to be better than nonhuman animals,” is everything good and decent in the human spirit. Interesting.

“The pure enjoyment of food,” regardless of the consequences: Cannibalism anyone? Do you think that Southern slave-owners refused to acknowledge the moral questions that arise from making property out of another sentient being and concluded with: “The abolitionists are an affront to everything I stand for, the pure enjoyment of profit.”? Humans can justify all sorts of evil by simply refusing to consider anything accept what “I want, I want, I want!” (enter foot stomping).

It’s the same kind of non-reason as the statement discussed above. Well Mr. Bourdain, eat a dick! (You see, I used the same kind of argument against him that he uses against us. He lauds these examples of adolescent retorts.)

Crossposted @ That Vegan Girl

Sections: Vegan Theory
Topics: Theory, veg, Vegan