16 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2020
  2. michaelpollan.com michaelpollan.com
    An Animal’s Place
    16
    1. alegfiel 07 Oct 2020
      “It must be admitted,” Singer writes, “that the existence of carnivorous animals does pose one problem for the ethics of Animal Liberation, and that is whether we should do anything about it.” Some animal rightists train their dogs and cats to become vegetarians.

      I work in a veterinary practice and this is beyond aggravating. People will go to the utmost of extremes to train their animals to conform to their beliefs, which is fine when it can be done without harming the animal in the long run, but oftentimes people take the cheaper route. But then there comes the question over whether we should interfere with how nature has made certain organisms in carnivores.?.

    2. alegfiel 07 Oct 2020
      But haven’t these chickens simply traded one predator for another–weasels for humans? True enough, and for the chickens this is probably not a bad deal. For brief as it is, the life expectancy of a farm animal would be considerably briefer in the world beyond the pasture fence or chicken coop.

      I don't think the domestication of other species is inherently evil or benevolent in nature. In the end, humans have the ability to elevate the lives of other species simply on a whim. Weather or not this species wants to be domesticated cannot be determined but human intervention can oftentimes lead to benefit the species, but it can also doom the species (even if it was going to go extinct) so it only exists in captivity/domesticated.

    3. alegfiel 07 Oct 2020
      Nor does their loss of autonomy seem to trouble these creatures. It is wrong, the rightists say, to treat animals as “means” rather than “ends,” yet the happiness of a working animal like the dog consists precisely in serving as a “means.”

      The premise that is introduced here is what questions different animals' existences in relation to humans as some benefit human lives directly and others do so indirectly such as supporting ecosystems.

    4. alegfiel 07 Oct 2020
      To think of domestication as a form of enslavement or even exploitation is to misconstrue the whole relationship, to project a human idea of power onto what is, in fact, an instance of mutualism between species.

      And Mutualism is found in so many different different species in the animal kingdom. It is naturally occurring as well as artificial when it comes to humans as we have the intelligence and dominance over animals simply because of our deeper understanding of genetics and biology.

    5. alegfiel 07 Oct 2020
      the root cause of this evil: unfettered capitalism. (Perhaps this explains why he resigned from the Bush administration just before his book’s publication.) A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency and the moral imperatives of religion or community, which have historically served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market.

      It's not that humans have used our "capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency", it's that we used our brains to maximize output without the consideration of the animals' lives in mind. Humans could redo our farming industries with the animals lives in mind but that would take time and money, yet the end goal wouldn't be that much of a difference cost-wise than the factory farming methods that are rightfully vilified(after many years of industrialization).

    6. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      From everything I’ve read, egg and hog operations are the worst. Beef cattle in America at least still live outdoors, albeit standing ankle deep in their own waste eating a diet that makes them sick. And broiler chickens, although they do get their beaks snipped off with a hot knife to keep them from cannibalizing one another under the stress of their confinement, at least don’t spend their eight-week lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing. That fate is reserved for the American laying hen, who passes her brief span piled together with a half-dozen other hens in a wire cage whose floor a single page of this magazine could carpet. Every natural instinct of this animal is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral “vices” that can include cannibalizing her cagemates and rubbing her body against the wire mesh until it is featherless and bleeding. Pain? Suffering? Madness? The operative suspension of disbelief depends on more neutral descriptors, like “vices” and “stress.” Whatever you want to call what’s going on in those cages, the 10 percent or so of hens that can’t bear it and simply die is built into the cost of production. And when the output of the others begins to ebb, the hens will be “force-molted”–starved of food and water and light for several days in order to stimulate a final bout of egg laying before their life’s work is done.

      It's asinine to believe that anyone would choose this option over giving these animals the ideal life, but the real problem is with the monetary ease that comes with factory farming over the ladder and why that outways giving these animals a respectable life.

    7. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      A trip to the dentist would be a torment for an ape that couldn’t be made to understand the purpose and duration of the procedure

      I fail to see the point of putting an ape in a dentist's chair simply because the task would benefit the ape, yes, but the ape hasn't evolved to NEED to have that understanding. That doesn't mean they are any greater or lesser for their ineptitude for this concept, it just is how they are. "it is what it is", unless humans want to teach/give the ape this understanding that taking care of its teeth will have health benefits.

    8. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      This is why killing animals for meat (and clothing) poses the most difficult animal rights challenge.

      Why is this a difficult concept? Most people would morally pick synthetic clothing over clothing made of furs and skin, but the industry for all these consumer goods has not quite reached an equilibrium where the synthetics are as readily available (both monetarily and physically).

    9. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      In everyday life, the choice is not between babies and chimps but between the pork and the tofu.

      This is a great point as it shows side-by-side the two comparisons and how we value each thing according to their likenesses to ourselves. If I were to put the three in order from what (morally) i find to be most-like myself to least-like myself it would go babies, then chimps, then pork, then tofu.

    10. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      Besides, humans don’t need to kill other creatures in order to survive; animals do. (Though if my cat, Otis, is any guide, animals sometimes kill for sheer pleasure.)

      This is true, humans have obtained the technological advancements to survive without the consumption of animal flesh. Sadly, this is not true on a populational standing, much less a widespread societal agenda. This does not mean people that choose to eat meat should be ostracized for their choices and be called a monster. They are just continuing to eat the way humans have been eating.

    11. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      To the “they do it, too” defense, the animal rightist has a devastating reply: do you really want to base your morality on the natural order? Murder and rape are natural, too.

      This actually was a retort to my last annotation! I'm loving this article.

      The additional argument that murder and rape are naturally occurring in the animal kingdom is a strong one, but not entirely applicable here as an organism killing another for food is MUCH more commonplace and necessary. This does make you question the necessity of it, which is a great way for the author to outline his own thinking.

    12. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      Bentham then asks what characteristic entitles any being to moral consideration. “Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse?” Obviously not, since “a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant.” He concludes: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

      Mercy and respect are the biggest points in this passage even though he has not explicitly mentioned them yet. Nothing wants to die (there's always situational exceptions in the animal kingdom, so don't at me), therefore it can be concluded that we should treat their lives with the respect that we would want for ourselves.

    13. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      the principle of equality demands they receive the same consideration. And the one all-important interest that we share with pigs, as with all sentient creatures, is an interest in avoiding pain.

      I instantly latched on to this last statement that all creatures have a shared interest in avoiding pain. This is the case in many animals but not in the all encompassing definition of The Food Chain. Carnivorous predators as a whole could care less that they are eating a baby animal of another species, as all they care about is the fact that the newborn animal was easy to catch... and don't get me started on how many animals will just starting eating whatever it has caught without actually killing it first. With this in mind i'm wondering how much worse humans (the majority) are to any other species that is out there.

    14. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      Upon this paradox people built a relationship in which they felt they could both honor and eat animals without looking away. But that accommodation has pretty much broken down; nowadays, it seems, we either look away or become vegetarians

      It's all about convenience of obtaining food and the emotional aspect of killing an animal is often too much effort for most individuals. The author outlines the two options well here.

    15. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      amending their laws to change the status of animals from “things” to “beings.”

      The humanization of animals is a very common tactic for this argumentation and this is an excellent way of introducing it as it helps you compare the two words for yourself because you're reading them as quotes. "Thing" just doesn't feel right to call a living, breathing animal that wants to continue living.

    16. alegfiel 06 Oct 2020
      Slowly but surely, the white man’s circle of moral consideration was expanded to admit first blacks, then women, then homosexuals. In each case, a group once thought to be so different from the prevailing “we” as to be undeserving of civil rights was, after a struggle, admitted to the club.

      The admittance that cisgendered white males as the dominant "we" that makes the decision over minority groups and what civil rights they can have was unexpected. I do value it for the fact that they are applying it here to symbolize the power/rights differences between humans and animals, but it leaves me wanting more situational analysis when i know it is more surface-level than I'm hoping.

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