Philosophical Vegan Forum

This is a thorny one.

One of the most interesting aspects of vegan/non-vegan debates, for me, is the way people often react when animal rights people compare factory farming and the slaughterhouse to the Jewish holocaust. I've found that most people object to the comparison, and some get extremely upset and vitriolic whenever it's made. I remember back when I was a meat eater, and I first heard the comparison. It didn't upset me, as such. In fact it troubled me for a long time, until I reached the conclusion that the comparison was accurate.

But why does this comparison have such a strong negative effect on people?

I have my ideas. In university, my major was American Studies, and a good deal of my studies revolved around American slavery. But while most people's interest was focused on the slaves themselves, I was always much more interested in the white slave owners, the slave drivers, the slave breakers, and what went on in their heads. I wanted to know how they could do what they did and feel alright about it.

One thing that is undeniable is that we humans have a fiercely hierarchical mindset. I think in the West this comes from two sources: our enslavement of animals during the agricultural revolution, and Aristotle's Great Chain of Being - the idea that more rational / intelligent = higher (i.e. God is the most rational, therefore He can do whatever He wants to His creatures; Man is more rational than animals, therefore He can do whatever He pleases to the them, and those humans who are less rational than Himself. This, of course, is where the term 'subhuman' comes from). Even today, people still have this medieval Judeo-Christian mindset, based on Plato and Aristotle, that we humans (mentally retarded or not, these days) are worth infinitely more than the animals on account of being more intelligent, and that being worth more gives us the license to take them and do whatever we want with them. Therefore, We are way up in the clouds with the angels, and they are way down in the dirt with the slugs. Consequently, Our sufferings cannot be compared with Theirs. So the story goes.

It's worth noting that many slave owners in America found the idea of comparing the murder of a white man and the murder of a black man to be disgusting and irrational, and they defended this position by stating that black people are naturally less intelligent and closer to nature than are white people. This is obviously untrue, but the root idea itself is also fallacious, and it's a fallacy which has come up in almost every animal rights debate I've heard. It's the 'But if God doesn't exist, where do you get your morality from?' of the animal exploitation apologists.

Another thing I've noticed is this: That people very often deny that they or their group were responsible for holocausts or genocides or atrocities. The Turkish deny the Armenian genocide; the Japanese often deny the Nanking massacre; they also deny the Korean comfort women issue, often claiming that the women in question weren't forced, but were willing - therefore it could be argued that the Japanese army was doing them a favour. Mukesh Singh, the New Delhi bus rapist who also raped a 5-year-old girl was asked if he felt any guilt about it, and responded, 'No, she was a beggar girl, her life was worthless'. This is a reoccurring pattern in human thought. It seems we will do anything to protect ourselves from the idea that we are responsible for indefensible cruelty and injustice, and this very often means denying that said cruelty and injustice took place - or else denying the victimhood of the victims. After all, "We don't do holocausts; We don't do massacres; We don't torture; We don't rape. These are what the Nazis did, and We're better than them. We're moral; We're decent; We don't take part in wicked acts." "Oh, really, then what about the animals you eat?" "Oh, well, they're just animals, their lives are worthless. And anyway, we're doing them a favour, and anyway it's a false comparison because excuse, excuse, excuse, apologetics, apologetics, apologetics." And so it goes.

I find it a very curious thing. I find the anger and resentment that people often show when confronted with the animal holocaust to be based partly on a skewed and outdated religious view of themselves and the animals, and also on a series of powerful self-defence mechanisms that are almost impossible to bring down.

I have more to say, but I think that's more than enough for now.

They are also very offended when comparisons are made to rape or murder, especially to demonstrate how when something is evolutionarily afvantageous or natural has no bearings on ethics.
I generally suggest that I'm not equating the issues but nonetheless it takes a lot of indoctrination for individuals to be more concerned about someone making a mere comparison than actual suffering and violence.

Agreed. On the odd occasions that I bring this up in conversation and the other person gets into a tizzy about it my usual response is to remind them and THEY are the ones who are pro-killing other beings by the billion for trivial reasons, THEY are the ones who are pro-rape, pro-exploitation, pro-mutilation, and pro-all the rest of it. We vegans are the one arguing against all that stuff.

Still, it's very, very hard to reason with people when they're so indoctrinated and so calloused to the sufferings of their own victims.

Great post, as usual.

I don't think the 'chain of being' itself is necessarily wrong (if based on scientific qualities; of course Aristotle was off the mark), or the source of the problem, so much as the deontological quality people ascribe to such moral hierarchies. That one step up or down is infinitely more important or less important; that's the root of the irrationality.

As soon as somebody is willing to admit things can be compared with each other, as a rational consequentialist, all of that dogma tends to break down.
Even if they say a human is worth a billion cows in moral value, at least some value at all is given, and that makes it possible to present a real moral argument.

Yeah, you make a good point about the steps being so significant in people's minds. They have to be; how else would they justify all the brutality?

The main problem I have with the Great Chain of Being is this: the attribute, in this system, which is the 'imbuer of rights' is rationality, and I can't see any reason to believe that having greater rationality would give one being the right to own and kill another. It seems to me a big appeal to nature based upon an attribute that human beings recognise that they possess but the ones they want to kill don't. I imagine if cows did possess greater rationality, we bloodthirsty hominids would be rooting around for some other arbitrary quality that the cows didn't possess and then holding that up as justification for the butchery. It's like throwing the dart into the wall and painting a bull's eye around it.

If hierarchies must exist, I think a much better case could be made for the significance of the ability to suffer and feel a sense of wellbeing. But, honestly, I don't much like hierarchies.

I think the bigger issue they would have to contend with is that so many humans are irrational.

Theists, and even likely carnists, would then be put on the menu alongside the cows they eat.

You could argue that it's more moral to eat carnists, since they implicitly consent to being killed and eaten by a higher being (since that is only consistent with their beliefs), but I'm not sure we should be free to judge the morality of our actions by the frameworks of those we act upon, seeing as those carnists are being inherently inconsistent and irrational and their frameworks are incoherent.

Haha, I love it! Talk about being hoist by one's own petard.

"Yes, well, I'm afraid that in your effort to prove there's nothing wrong will killing and eating less rational beings that yourself you've just made one... two... that's three fallacies in your argument - including reductio ad Hitlerium." *Sucks in air between teeth* "So, if you'd just like to put your head on the chopping block there, we'll... you know. Well, I don't make the rules, do I? It's nature innit?" Thwack!

Idk about the sentient arguments per set. Let's say plants were sentient and even more rational than many animals.
We would still have to eat them since theres no way we can go any lower and eating animals always involves killing more plants anyways.

But if sentience is not the quality that allows membership of the moral community, I can't imagine what could be. I can't imagine that such things as moral concepts could exist without sentience.

If it were proven that plants were in fact sentient I would still eat them, simply for reasons of self-preservation, but it's certain that my attitude towards them would change. I haven't thought about it enough to say in what way my attitude would change, but I seriously doubt it's a prospect I'll ever have to seriously consider.

If plants were sentient, then scientific naturalism and evolution would be wrong. So, it's really hard to draw any sensible conclusions from that scenario, since we'd essentially be dealing with a supernatural reality. When you throw all known sense and reasoning out the window, it could just as well be that they like being eaten, since none of it would be predicated on reason or evolutionary reactions you would expect.