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I've recently been reading the books of Peter Singer, a philosopher who is best known for his work on animal rights and charity for the poor. When I took one of his classes in college, I found his arguments impossible to disagree with, but his conclusions outrageous. That was when I first seriously considered the possibility that what I was doing when I ate meat was wrong. Unfortunately (0r fortunately... I'm still not sure) life got in the way. Dietary demands from competing in a college sport and a lack of time and gumption made dropping meat a seemingly impossible task, so I never tried.
Revisiting the same arguments of Singer's now, I can no longer justify my eating meat in the majority of cases. Being young, single, and working long hours in the city means that I eat out almost all of the time. In these cases it's a matter of picking one item off of the menu rather than another. Is my preference for the taste of beef rather than tofu so important that I need to torture and kill an animal (who I imagine would very much prefer not to be tortured and killed) to satisfy it?
Short Term Goal:
- Eat vegetarian options at all restaurants/office cafeteria.
- Eat vegetarian when it doesn't inconvenience others.
- Not feel bad when a meal doesn't fall into one of the above two categories.
- Learn more about what foods I can eat ethically.
That being said.... My dinner tonight tragically undelicious. I hate Tofu.
Meat... MISS U
I hope to do some posts to discuss some of the other ethical quandaries bouncing around in my head, and I'll let you know how this little experiment is going. Please feel free to give me some support (if you're so inclined) or ridicule (I may actually prefer this, probably a better motivator for me). And definitely make fun of me if I stop within the next week.
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When facebook told me you weren't eating meat, I had to find out why...
ReplyDeleteIs this the "we can eat meat if we don't inflict pain on the amimals we are eating before we kill them" deal?
Interesting... but how's the tofu?
As I read him, Singer proposes that all resource allocation decisions should be made to minimize suffering across the spectrum of "beings" that can feel pain, weighted by his hierarchy of suffering that compares various pains among the various beings.
ReplyDeleteEven applied only to humans, the idea that resources should not be expended on pursuits that to not seek to reduce human suffering to some minimal degree until that minimal degree is reached by all persons has drastic consequences. It may also be materially flawed in the sense that resources are, to a large degree, created by persons incentivized to create them. Absent incentive, i.e. producing resources for those who cannot provide incentive, net resources may decrease.
Those are pretty good readings of Singer (to my knowledge).
ReplyDeleteJames, I think a sneaky utilitarian can always get out of problems like the one you pose by simply making the utilitarian calculus more elaborate.
For example, if one knows that resources won't be produced without incentives... it would be ethical for someone to keep enough of their resources to remain incentivized. People do that all the time... The super-rich give a ton of money to charity, but rarely impoverish themselves. Are they doing enough?
How do you find that border between giving and keeping?