Scrooge: "It also implies a form of moral superiority which we humans don't really approve of..."I certainly am guilty of adopting a holier than thou attitude at times. More often I just get angry and argue, questioning others' moral choices without always refering back to my own. (I do not consider myself morally pristine by a long shot. I am a work in progress I suppose, as we all are.) But often it is just me mentioning my dietary choices, with no effort at debate or conversion, which angers people.
Part of this may be backlash against other preachy veggies they've met, or the way veggies are portrayed in the media and entertainment, as being up on a high horse. Part of it I think is the realization that someone else believes very strongly in something, while this person has not given it much thought. Maybe some people feel guilty, or at least think there's a chance they should feel guilty, but they haven't explored the issue enough. Then people start to get deffensive. Well, I can't express it clearly, but it's one possibility.
Scrooge: "And yet once you've started it ceases to be disgusting and becomes a part of everyday life. In fact it becomes an enormously interesting learning experience. I think the same is true where slaughter is still necessary, it is something which is just done, there is no sort of cultural taboo associated with it. It is not until we become separated from it that we are firstly affected by, and then repelled by it. I believe that in a society where we had to slaughter our own food vegetarianism would all but disappear."
Good point, but I might argue it the other way. What if the reason people learned to accept it was because they HAD to do it, so they learned to cope. Think perhaps of some nazi soldiers, who had to torture human beings. Surely not every single one of these soldiers was a "monster". Surely some of them must have been repulsed by the attrocities at the outset. Yet, when their commanding officers tell them to bury someone alive or to cut off a body part, after the umpteenth time they would develop a coping mechanism which allowed them to objectify their victims.
Just thought of another example. I recently saw the movie "Silence of the Lambs", and in it the serial killer who is skinning women alive is depicted as speaking to his victims in the third person. (Example, instead of saying "Drink the water," he says "It drinks the water.") This way he avoids any chance of feeling remorse, so he can take what he wants and never see his victim as human, or as having a soul. It's obviously just a movie, but I think it's an interesting illustration of my point taken to an extreme.
Funny, the word I wanted to use was "dehumanize", meaning to see them as something "less than" human. To me, the very fact that this concept/word exists is proof of how deep our objectification of non-humans goes. Certainly no-one can deny that fuzzy bunnies and baby seals feel pain and fear, so what allows people to put them through such attrocities daily? Back to the point, I would argue that the raising/slaughter of animals is this same process occurring, albeit to a lesser degree, yet on a larger scale.
I look forward to your other post, and would love to chat about the pros and cons of domestication.
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