Cracking new Morrissey interview - full transcript here

[Anaesthesine]

It's amazing that this argument is still going on after all these years; Morrissey did not come up with the abbatoir=concentration camp analogy, nor did PETA.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Polish Jew who fled his country a few years before Hitler invaded and who lost family in the Nazi death camps is the man who penned the phrase: "in relation to animals, all men are Nazis; for the animals, it is an Eternal Treblinka." Singer was a Nobel prize-winning author, a humanitarian and a supporter of the notion of animals rights. He wasn't some armchair bleeding-heart, he watched the madness that gave rise to the concentration camps unfold, and he had no problem equating the industrial killing of animals with the horrors of man's inhumanity to man.

It doesn't matter if a chicken or a cow knows what a Nazi is, it matters that animals feel pain, that they suffer, that they are helpless and that they are killed in mind-numbing numbers with no compassion whatsoever. The Nazis dehumanized their victims; they were killing "vermin" and not men, women and children. We devalue animals to the extent that they are now "harvested"; the same desensitization is required to kill on an industrial scale. The lack of compassion and empathy is what allowed the Nazis to slaughter their victims, and it is the same lack of compassion and empathy that allows us to slaughter millions upon millions of animals every single day. We are not talking about moral equivalence, we are talking about the human capacity for disengagement with other living things, about notions of human mercy, justice and the right to petition a loving god. It is a profound philosophical point.

As for "Meat is Murder" being literally true, it is about as factual as "Silence=Death" another phrase from the period that changed minds and saved lives. Morrissey should be very proud of his song, and its continuing emotional resonance.

 

[Uncleskinny]

Smiler's Schtick (part 2)...

Find a thread that he thinks impugns Morrissey
Post a related point
Defend that point to the death
Ask ancilliary, non-related questions
Always have the last word
Deflect from the impugning of Morrissey
Job Done

P.

 

[Peterb]

From your link

"Author Robert Payne, in his biography of Hitler, The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler (Praeger, 1973) theorizes that the image of Hitler as a vegetarian ascetic was deliberately fostered by propaganda minster Joseph Goebbels:

"Hitler's asceticism played an important part in the image he projected over Germany. According to the widely believed legend he neither smoked nor drank, nor did he eat meat or have anything to do with women. Only the first was true. He drank beer and diluted wine frequently, had a special fondness for Bavarian sausages and kept a mistress....His asceticism was a fiction invented by Goebbels to emphasize his total dedication, his self-control, the distance that separated him from other men....In fact, he was remarkably self-indulgent and possessed none of the instincts of the ascetic. His cook, an enormously fat man named Willy Kannenberg, produced exquisite meals and acted as court jester. Although Hitler had no fondness for meat except in the form of sausages and never ate fish, he enjoyed caviar..."

I do believe however, that he only had one ball. I could be wrong though.

Iona Pink, you are emerging as one of my favourite posters. Your final sentance was laugh out funny (and at 7:30 on a Thursday morning at work that is quite an achievement).

 

[Anonymous]

Ugh.

I want to like PETA, but stuff like that is horrible. I mean, it's insulting to my intelligence. When I see that poster, I think-- well, first I think, "Why'd they have to use the damn "Star Trek" font"? But then I think, "PETA thinks I'm a f***ing idiot". And that makes me far less likely to donate money.

The poster illustrates what I'm talking about. To chickens, humans can't be Nazis. Chickens don't know what the f*** a Nazi is.

Like I said, I completely understand the message the poster is trying to convey. It's just incredibly insulting. They could go in so many other directions.

The point about Morrissey following PETA's lead is well taken, though. I figured that was the case. He's repeating talking points.

You're wrong. It's a fundamental problem with your argument that the thing being killed must have whatever arbitrary level of intelligence or consciousness. That's a gimmick that you tricked yourself into to think you've got a reasonable argument but you don't because the burden of this higher order standard you want to impose does not fall on the entity doing the dying but the one doing the killing. It doesn't matter what it is, it's a clever way to define a difference between animals and people for the purpose of this argument.

Look at this. I can get the death penalty for murdering someone with severe handicaps that would preclude them from qualifying to be eligible themselves. If I murder someone with an IQ of 130 or they murder me, in each case we might qualify for the death penalty. If I murder someone with an IQ of 85 I can still get the death penalty, but if they murder me, now that George Bush is no longer in office, they could not.

It is the capacity of the one doing the killing that makes the difference. A tiger can't murder me. It can kill me. But I can murder a tiger because I know better.

 

[123xyz]

Q: Did you say, in more or less words, that you morally believe eating meat is wrong?
A: Yes.

Q: Do you eat meat?
A: Yes.

That makes you a hypocrite.
You can post all the links you like, and you can keep replying all you like...it doesn't change the fact that you can't grasp the simple concept of hypocrisy.

http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/hypocrisy
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrisy
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hypocrisy
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hypocrisy

Should I be jumping in ? Isn't that perhaps a bit severe ? Maybe Smiler's still making his way towards vegetarianism and finding it a bit tough ? Maybe his appetite has run ahead of his genuinely held ethical concerns and he's at the stage of pausing and turning around and waiting for the latter to catch up...

I guess I think that hypocrisy ( if just a stepping stone on the way ) is better than a consistent inertia ...

 

[joe frady]

Controversial statements like the comparison of abattoirs to what happened in Germany only hold water, where debate is concerned, in terms of being controversial. The statement itself is so insensitive and stupid that to deconstruct it almost lends a false credence to the notion of profundity on Morrissey's part...which I no longer believe is a trait he possesses.

This is, at the outset, a sickening statement, until you take into context who it's coming from and where he is at in his career and why he is saying things like this. And, when these circumstances are factored in, it's not offensive anymore...it's laughably absurd and nobody should be bothered by it.

I am not saying that Morrissey was joking, nor am I saying that he should be excused for making the remark. Personally, I'd love nothing more than for the Bear Jew to introduce Morrissey to a Louisville Slugger, the fun way. But what I'm saying is, shit can only fall from an asshole.

And that's what his statement is, and that's what he is. So, be upset about it and debate it and be troubled by how horrible it was for him to say, and you're right, but what's the point? Stupid bitter insensitivity is all he's capable of these days. It's silly to get upset about. He's gasping for air.

The guy isn't shocking or offensive...he's just pathetic.

So what you've just said, amongst other things, is you would actually like Morrissey to have his skull smashed open via a baseball bat. And therefore killed, presumably. Really? You genuinely want him dead, yes? Or am I just not getting your shit-stirring, 'edgy' humour?

How does that work, exactly? I mean I've read you passionately and eloquently delineate many Morrissey songs and performances in the past so I think I understand that you can appreciate parts of his work that most people, let alone most fans, don't get. And I can then get that you think he's pathetic and an asshole now. But then you want him bludgeoned to death?

Is it that the violence of the passion you once held is now mirrored in the expression of the loss of that passion? I'm really interested in how that works. Someone whose work did clearly mean so much to you once is now so worthless an artist, and a person, that they deserve a violent, painful death? If that person meant so much at one point in your life wouldn't you feel some sense of debt of loyalty? That does not mean blind devotion, just an acceptance that the artist changes, and you change. But with the recognition, and remembrance, that a bond was formed then slowly let loose. I don't know what it's like to so comprehensively lose it, but if I did I would hope I'd just go on to other things, find other artistic inspirations, and other means of getting through the goddamn day. I would hope that I wouldn't endlessly pick at the scab, and linger at the scene of the accident.

Or was the statement a response in kind to the particular measure of Morrissey's words? And am I just not getting the gag?

 

[Amy]

You see a contradiction and/or dishonesty; I do not. I think Morrissey voices a profound conflict in human nature and he believes he sees the truth in it. I think the natural human instinct toward the romantic ideal lives within him and a misty-eyed bit of himself longs for it to be true (and that is voiced as a pure longing in some songs); and yet he knows we are all so profoundly f***ed-up that none of us can be the answer other flawed people think they will find in another. for me there is not a Moz who believes in romance and one who likes to pretend love is false. I think he wishes love and the solace of partnership were true -- that we could find ourselves completed by others; but then he wakes from a dream and finds otherwise....

But that's just it; Morrissey has been so wounded over the years, and had his expectations crippled, that he talks as though that romantic part of himself has ceased to exist. I don't believe for 1 second that Morrissey truly thinks love is a futile 'dream', or that marriage is a delusion and a sham promise comparable to a funeral. I'm pretty sure he's been in love himself a few times by now, seen others fall in love, and is very aware that love is 'real' for some people and that's why he shouldn't be mocking it. Morrissey's musical legacy is a catalog of his absolute obsession with love. The 'wreath' stuff is just what he has used to convince himself that he doesn't need love and can live without it - he's warping his loneliness into some kind of "crusade against mundanity/domesticity" in an attempt to hide his envy of those lucky enough to find a love that lasts.

He's mocked marriage for years - "when I was younger, I thought people got married and had children only due to an immense lack of imagination", he's mocked relationships because it involves 'buying presents for other people's nieces' and said that he pities people who have wedding pictures and such in their house. All this is sheer, undiluted bitterness caused by bad experience and intense envy. If he had been given the opportunity and found the "right" person in his teens like Johnny Marr did, I think he would have joined the "wedding-pictures-on-the-TV" crew without a moment's hesitation and been happy as a pig in shit. But that didn't happen, and what we're facing now is a man is his mid-50s who has lost hope of finding anybody and is content to sit on the sidelines and laugh at people who have. That's why I feel sorry for him.

For the sake of this discussion, we're assuming that that "wreath" statement etc was serious on Morrissey's part. I don't think it was. I think it was typical Morrissey hyperbole, cultivating the public image of himself as an eternal loner and misanthrope. I think - I hope - he was just repeating the party line.

"When I'm dead
It will be read -
"Here Lies The Public Image"
5 percent human being...
And 95, image.

[...]

I had a love and she was very kind
But she was no match for the Public Image"

 

[123xyz]

I hope[/I] - he was just repeating the party line.

[/B]"

It definitely has to be hyperbole. I can't imagine Moz turning the garden hose on his nephew/cousin/etc when they come to visit. Or turning up to sister's wedding in a hearse...

 

[Deleted member 1074]

I didn't need to read it I already knew, I just posted the link to educate you.

Yeah, because I need to be "educated" by someone who can't grasp simple concepts and misspells words half the time...

If you're going to try to educate someone, you know, it helps to actually HAVE an education...just sayin'.

 

[Worm]

You're wrong. It's a fundamental problem with your argument that the thing being killed must have whatever arbitrary level of intelligence or consciousness. That's a gimmick that you tricked yourself into to think you've got a reasonable argument but you don't because the burden of this higher order standard you want to impose does not fall on the entity doing the dying but the one doing the killing. It doesn't matter what it is, it's a clever way to define a difference between animals and people for the purpose of this argument.

Look at this. I can get the death penalty for murdering someone with severe handicaps that would preclude them from qualifying to be eligible themselves. If I murder someone with an IQ of 130 or they murder me, in each case we might qualify for the death penalty. If I murder someone with an IQ of 85 I can still get the death penalty, but if they murder me, now that George Bush is no longer in office, they could not.

It is the capacity of the one doing the killing that makes the difference. A tiger can't murder me. It can kill me. But I can murder a tiger because I know better.

You're confusing a difference in kind with a difference in degree. I never said those with higher IQs have a right to kill those with lower IQs, which is a difference in degree. In fact, when smiler brought up the hypothetical case of a human being with a severe mental handicap, I said that person's life was equally as important as mine. However, I've stated that human beings are a higher form of life than animals, which is a difference in kind.

The sticking point seems to be that you're taking my argument as all-or-nothing. Is it impossible to imagine a person who considers humans a higher form life than animals, and, at the same time, looks upon animals with great sensitivity and compassion, and tries to do as little harm to them as possible?

The reply will be that as soon as a dividing line is drawn between humans and animals, it's only a matter of time before similar lines are drawn between different kinds of humans. That of course is a distinct possibility, but in my view it presupposes that most human beings are incredibly weak-minded and can't be trusted to think for themselves. Which may well be the case, though I'm foolish enough to give people more credit than that.

These matters are interesting, but ultimately fall outside of the original topic. Equating the Holocaust with the meat industry is outrageous. It's a false parallel which obscures the subject. Moreover, there is a difference between an imaginative, thoughtful, sober, carefully-constructed comparison between the suffering of animals and the Holocaust, done to foster greater sensitivity to suffering in people who are otherwise desensitized to slaughter, and the cheap exploitation and shock tactics of PETA's ad campaign. Those are the issues in play here.

 

[Worm]

I guess I think that hypocrisy ( if just a stepping stone on the way ) is better than a consistent inertia ...

Assuming you are correct, the problem you're describing goes some way toward illustrating one of the underlying problems in this debate, which is that the matter always comes down to a black-and-white, zero-sum question about the sanctity of life. There's more than one way to skin the cat, if you'll pardon the expression.

 

[123xyz]

You're confusing a difference in kind with a difference in degree. I never said those with higher IQs have a right to kill those with lower IQs, which is a difference in degree. In fact, when smiler brought up the hypothetical case of a human being with a severe mental handicap, I said that person's life was equally as important as mine. However, I've stated that human beings are a higher form of life than animals, which is a difference in kind.

The sticking point seems to be that you're taking my argument as all-or-nothing. Is it impossible to imagine a person who considers humans a higher form life than animals, and, at the same time, looks upon animals with great sensitivity and compassion, and tries to do as little harm to them as possible?

The reply will be that as soon as a dividing line is drawn between humans and animals, it's only a matter of time before similar lines are drawn between different kinds of humans. That of course is a distinct possibility, but in my view it presupposes that most human beings are incredibly weak-minded and can't be trusted to think for themselves. Which may well be the case.

These matters are interesting, but ultimately fall outside of the original topic. Equating the Holocaust with the meat industry is outrageous. It's a false parallel which obscures the argument. Moreover, there is a difference between an imaginative, thoughtful, sober, carefully-constructed comparison between the suffering of animals and the Holocaust, done to foster greater sensitivity to suffering in people who are otherwise desensitized to slaughter, and the cheap exploitation and shock tactics of PETA's ad campaign. Those are the issues in play here.

I wish the above "Anonymous" would register with a name. I almost feel like I'm talking about/to a cloud or a shadow. I think he/she 's hit on a good point ( and ,yes, one I'm quite keen about).


Your suggestion that Anon. is confusing kind with degree ( or qualitative with quantitative ) is a bit of a red herring , isn't it ? Look at a prodigious difference in IQ between two people (i.e. one average , one so utterly impaired as to lack any capacity to progress, cognitively, beyond the six-month stage) .


The first person comes complete with past , present, future and a conscious appreciation of these whereas the second is "just" a bundle of impulses & sensations ... you know, forever experiencing life as abrupt and immediate. Obviously , I'm trying to say that the second person is (following your chicken/human distinction mentioned earlier) scarcely other than chicken-like in their existence. Other than a purely semantic or genetic distinguishing , I can't see how this isn't quantitative ... so, yes , degrees , not kind. A very broad spectrum certainly , but the same spectrum.


Of course, I'm not bailing you up for an explanation but, really, I can only think that the objection to the whole "abattoir = auschwitz" is an aesthetic one. There's room for both "shock-&-awe" efforts and , as you say above, more sober campaigns - surely there are "unconverted" people out there who might be responsive to one and not the other.
Maybe the target demographic for the "shock & awe" isn't so much the uninitiated as the already involved .... you know, to further reinforce and galvanise ? As for how the "shock/awe" efforts potentially deter , who knows to what extent ? Or, indeed, to what extent this is compensated for by the more subdued and disinterested actions ?


It's hard to really burrow into this topic without seeming condescending and constipated ...

 

[Worm]

How is a prodigious difference in IQ between two people (i.e. one average , one so utterly impaired as to lack any capacity to progress, cognitively, beyond the six-month stage) merely quantitative?

I was replying to a specific criticism of my argument. I'm well aware of the moral hazards of determining whether one kind of human is the same as another. You bring up a human being who's a "vegetable", so to speak, but there's also the matter of cloning. I mentioned this earlier. It's a serious dilemma which is fast approaching. A day will come when we can "grow" humans and harvest them for body parts. What are we going to do then?

I don't have an answer. And I don't intend to articulate a rubric for distinguishing between one kind of person and another. That's a mistake. I do hold that there's a difference between human beings and animals. That's a distinction I make within the context of certain arguments, as a rhetorical necessity; the subject is endless, and I think we can certainly get into lots of interesting discussions about what constitutes the human and the non-human-- there are many fascinating ways to approach the subject, from science fiction movies like "Blade Runner" to academic works like one of my favorites, "Vibrant Matter", authored by Jane Bennett-- but I think it's very important to frame the question properly because these dialogues tend to drift into meaningless cul-de-sacs. We can talk for hours, days, weeks, but Bishop Berkeley's common-sense test should always be accounted for in any philosophical dialogue: in this case, when I pass a dog in the street or a cockroach in the gutter I find I'm not terribly uncertain about humanity's place in the natural order.

This conversation has already drifted, because my original intent was not to argue about whether a cat's life is equal to a woman's life. The core topic here is whether or not it's appropriate to draw a comparison between the Holocaust and the meat industry. You call the objection an aesthetic one, a term I loosely accept, but aesthetics matter in the realm of persuasion. PETA and Morrissey have chosen to use a shock tactic in an attempt to change how people think about meat. It's totally inappropriate, in my view, but even if I'm wrong, there's simply no question that for every one person they convince with the KFC=Treblinka argument they're alienating hundreds and maybe thousands of others. Remember, if the life of a chicken has the same value and dignity as the life of a man, then Ingrid Newkirk is hurting the beings she's trying to protect if every PETA campaign creates a penny's-worth of vegetarians and a pound's-worth of people who dismiss her as a fruitcake radical. Ask yourself a question. If you can save the lives of 100 cows sticking to an ideal which most people do not and never will share, or 10,000 cows by using milder, more practical arguments to convince people to give up meat, which path would you follow? Which path would you follow, knowing lives are at stake-- lives you philosophically hold to have the same value as your own?

You know, the PETA campaign is very much like comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis in other areas of debate. It's like Godwin's Law, on the Internet. Eventually everything boils down to the crudest, most reductive, least helpful comparisons. When it reaches that point a switch is flipped. People just turn off. Must every evil on the planet look like a dictator with a bad moustache? Do we not have the language to change our society into a compassionate and caring one without linking dinner to the gravest atrocities in human history? Am I such a mindless bastard that I can't sympathize with the plight of a cow in a slaughterhouse or a rat in a laboratory cage without being whacked in the head with a comparison to Nazis? It's completely insulting.

You say there's room for both kinds of campaigns. To some extent that's true. I happen to think that songs like "Meat Is Murder" serve a tremendous purpose and do a lot of good. However, in the larger picture, when you look at these causes, I really think the target audience needs to be considered. I'm been a Smiths fan for a long time. I've known people who were deeply affected by "Meat Is Murder" and changed their lives because of it. I've also met people who not only laughed at the song but heaped scorn on Morrissey for his vegetarianism. I'm not confused about which side I'm on, but many times, when I meet otherwise good people-- decent, caring people who abhor cruelty and generally support progressive causes-- who acrimoniously dismiss "left-wing radical neo-hippie bullshit", I have to ask myself, is it the message they don't like, or how the message is getting to them? Are they people who can't bring themselves to join the cause because of the people recruiting them? Again, if lives are at stake, these aren't trivial questions.

 

[123xyz]

I was replying to a specific criticism of my argument. I'm well aware of the moral hazards of determining whether one kind of human is the same as another. You bring up a human being who's a "vegetable", so to speak, but there's also the matter of cloning. I mentioned this earlier. It's a serious dilemma which is fast approaching. A day will come when we can "grow" humans and harvest them for body parts. What are we going to do then?

I don't have an answer. And I don't intend to articulate a rubric for distinguishing between one kind of person and another. That's a mistake. I do hold that there's a difference between human beings and animals. That's a distinction I make within the context of certain arguments, as a rhetorical necessity; the subject is endless, and I think we can certainly get into lots of interesting discussions about what constitutes the human and the non-human-- there are many fascinating ways to approach the subject, from science fiction movies like "Blade Runner" to academic works like one of my favorites, "Vibrant Matter", authored by Jane Bennett-- but I think it's very important to frame the question properly because these dialogues tend to drift into meaningless cul-de-sacs. We can talk for hours, days, weeks, but Bishop Berkeley's common-sense test should always be accounted for in any philosophical dialogue: in this case, when I pass a dog in the street or a cockroach in the gutter I find I'm not terribly uncertain about humanity's place in the natural order.

This conversation has already drifted, because my original intent was not to argue about whether a cat's life is equal to a woman's life. The core topic here is whether or not it's appropriate to draw a comparison between the Holocaust and the meat industry. You call the objection an aesthetic one, a term I loosely accept, but aesthetics matter in the realm of persuasion. PETA and Morrissey have chosen to use a shock tactic in an attempt to change how people think about meat. It's totally inappropriate, in my view, but even if I'm wrong, there's simply no question that for every one person they convince with the KFC=Treblinka argument they're alienating hundreds and maybe thousands of others. Remember, if the life of a chicken has the same value and dignity as the life of a man, then Ingrid Newkirk is hurting the beings she's trying to protect if every PETA campaign creates a penny's-worth of vegetarians and a pound's-worth of people who dismiss her as a fruitcake radical. Ask yourself a question. If you can save the lives of 100 cows sticking to an ideal which most people do not and never will share, or 10,000 cows by using milder, more practical arguments to convince people to give up meat, which path would you follow? Which path would you follow, knowing lives are at stake-- lives you philosophically hold to have the same value as your own?

You know, the PETA campaign is very much like comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis in other areas of debate. It's like Godwin's Law, on the Internet. Eventually everything boils down to the crudest, most reductive, least helpful comparisons. When it reaches that point a switch is flipped. People just turn off. Must every evil on the planet look like a dictator with a bad moustache? Do we not have the language to change our society into a compassionate and caring one without likening it to the gravest atrocities in human history? Am I such a mindless bastard that I can't sympathize with the plight of a cow in a slaughterhouse or a rat in a laboratory cage without being whacked in the head with a comparison to Nazis? It's completely insulting.

You say there's room for both kinds of campaigns. To some extent that's true. I happen to think that songs like "Meat Is Murder" serve a tremendous purpose and do a lot of good. However, in the larger picture, when you look at these causes, I really think the target audience needs to be considered. I'm been a Smiths fan for a long time. I've known people who were deeply affected by "Meat Is Murder" and changed their lives because of it. I've also met people who not only laughed at the song but heaped scorn on Morrissey for his vegetarianism. I'm not confused about which side I'm on, but many times, when I meet otherwise good people-- decent, caring people who abhor cruelty and generally support progressive causes-- who acrimoniously dismiss "left-wing radical neo-hippie bullshit", I have to ask myself, is it the message they don't like, or how the message is getting to them? Are they people who can't bring themselves to join the cause because of the people recruiting them? Again, if lives are at stake, these aren't trivial questions.

You're right to bring up the drift from topic so I might try to avoid drilling and just have a quick head scratch. I guess I'd like to see the dichotomy "human - animal" replaced with "sentient - non-sentient". Just quickly, was never a fan of Berkeley's stone-kicking bravado .

Personally, I suppose I don't have that strong awareness of distinction when passing a dog, etc. I found the more and more ethology and zoology textbooks I looked at ( as both a chore and a pleasure) , the less and less I saw the distinction. There's a resident magpie family which has been coming to my family home for about twenty years now. When I hear the high-pitched squawk of their babies in the summer , I'm reminded of my niece's shrill cry when hungry.


From an evolutionary perspective ( as I understand it), the cry of the infant is truly exasperating to hear so as to induce hasty feeding from the caregiver but also to avoid attracting predators. That's apparently another reason why parents ( in any number of bird and mammal species ) rush to the sound of the distressed infant - so predators won't hear it and pick off the young. The striking similarity of tone, pitch ,etc. in magpie, felid ,human, etc. young just amazes me - "similar" is the concept I can't lose sight of ever again.

Looking at the sophisticated play behaviour in magpies ( and reading all I could about it ) again reinforced this. I remember seeing two juvenile magpies, in my family's backyard, lying on their sides , less than a foot or so apart, kicking an old tennis ball back and forth to one another for approx. a minute. Social object play is a renowned indicator of intelligence as is turn-taking in play which, yes, is exactly what juvenile magpies do . One picks up a stick and rushes about on the grass with it for a little while before falling over and letting its sibling jump on it a few times, snatch the stick and then rush off itself, etc. The swapping back and forth of roles ( i.e. from initiator to responder) just seems obviously similar to exactly what you and I are doing now.


Could go on for hours but have probably hogged the boards enough for one day ...

 

[Worm]

You're right to bring up the drift from topic so I might try to avoid drilling and just have a quick head scratch. I guess I'd like to see the dichotomy "human - animal" replaced with "sentient - non-sentient". Just quickly, was never a fan of Berkeley's stone-kicking bravado .

Personally, I suppose I don't have that strong awareness of distinction when passing a dog, etc. I found the more and more ethology and zoology textbooks I looked at ( as both a chore and a pleasure) , the less and less I saw the distinction. There's a resident magpie family which has been coming to my family home for about twenty years now. When I hear the high-pitched squawk of their babies in the summer , I'm reminded of my niece's shrill cry when hungry.


From an evolutionary perspective ( as I understand it), the cry of the infant is truly exasperating to hear so as to induce hasty feeding from the caregiver but also to avoid attracting predators. That's apparently another reason why parents ( in any number of bird and mammal species ) rush to the sound of the distressed infant - so predators won't hear it and pick off the young. The striking similarity of tone, pitch ,etc. in magpie, felid ,human, etc. young just amazes me - "similar" is the concept I can't lose sight of ever again.

Looking at the sophisticated play behaviour in magpies ( and reading all I could about it ) again reinforced this. I remember seeing two juvenile magpies, in my family's backyard, lying on their sides , less than a foot or so apart, kicking an old tennis ball back and forth to one another for approx. a minute. Social object play is a renowned indicator of intelligence as is turn-taking in play which, yes, is exactly what juvenile magpies do . One picks up a stick and rushes about on the grass with it for a little while before falling over and letting its sibling jump on it a few times, snatch the stick and then rush off itself, etc.

Could go on for hours but have probably hogged the boards enough for one day ...

You're bringing some valid observations to the table. I've had many of the same about animals in my vicinity. Do magpies exhibit social behavior? Do magpies have intelligence? Would magpies suffer if you tortured them? Yes, yes, yes. Is the next logical step to aver that the suffering of a magpie is the same as the suffering of a human being in a concentration camp?

The swapping back and forth of roles ( i.e. from initiator to responder) just seems obviously similar to exactly what you and I are doing now.

Exactly? Or similar? Equal? Or approximate?

Why is it worth noting that we share characteristics with animals? We're animals. Nobody's disputing that. But we are a different kind of animal. Our capacity for joy, sorrow, happiness, and suffering, are orders of magnitude greater than that of magpies.

 

[Peterb]

You're right to bring up the drift from topic so I might try to avoid drilling and just have a quick head scratch. I guess I'd like to see the dichotomy "human - animal" replaced with "sentient - non-sentient". Just quickly, was never a fan of Berkeley's stone-kicking bravado .

Personally, I suppose I don't have that strong awareness of distinction when passing a dog, etc. I found the more and more ethology and zoology textbooks I looked at ( as both a chore and a pleasure) , the less and less I saw the distinction. There's a resident magpie family which has been coming to my family home for about twenty years now. When I hear the high-pitched squawk of their babies in the summer , I'm reminded of my niece's shrill cry when hungry.


From an evolutionary perspective ( as I understand it), the cry of the infant is truly exasperating to hear so as to induce hasty feeding from the caregiver but also to avoid attracting predators. That's apparently another reason why parents ( in any number of bird and mammal species ) rush to the sound of the distressed infant - so predators won't hear it and pick off the young. The striking similarity of tone, pitch ,etc. in magpie, felid ,human, etc. young just amazes me - "similar" is the concept I can't lose sight of ever again.

Looking at the sophisticated play behaviour in magpies ( and reading all I could about it ) again reinforced this. I remember seeing two juvenile magpies, in my family's backyard, lying on their sides , less than a foot or so apart, kicking an old tennis ball back and forth to one another for approx. a minute. Social object play is a renowned indicator of intelligence as is turn-taking in play which, yes, is exactly what juvenile magpies do . One picks up a stick and rushes about on the grass with it for a little while before falling over and letting its sibling jump on it a few times, snatch the stick and then rush off itself, etc. The swapping back and forth of roles ( i.e. from initiator to responder) just seems obviously similar to exactly what you and I are doing now.


Could go on for hours but have probably hogged the boards enough for one day ...

I think you could also look at the behaviour of insects or bacteria and be impressed by the sophistication and complexity of the systems they employ to survive but I'm not sure where this gets us. As Worm pointed out, are you sure grass isn't worthy of our protection (the stuff I smoke certainly is not gonna be saved!) This arguement is surely academic. When it comes down to it we have to be subjective. Would you value a magpies life equal to your partners? Personally I'd see a field of cows disected to save the life of a stranger.

 

[123xyz]

I think you could also look at the behaviour of insects or bacteria and be impressed by the sophistication and complexity of the systems they employ to survive but I'm not sure where this gets us. As Worm pointed out, are you sure grass isn't worthy of our protection (the stuff I smoke certainly is not gonna be saved!) This arguement is surely academic. When it comes down to it we have to be subjective. Would you value a magpies life equal to your partners? Personally I'd see a field of cows disected to save the life of a stranger.

Well, I'd say insects and bacteria fall into the non-sentient category as, yes, grass does. That whole , you know, "lack-of-central-nervous-system" thing is a bit of a give-away in my opinion. No central nervous system ( or next to none) equals no suffering.


I don't dispute subjectivity - I suppose I feel the question is : to what extent should we be biased towards "our own" ? In the industrialised West , there just isn't any longer a reasonable argument ( that I can see) for eating animals.

The "field of cows vs. life of person" is a false dichotomy ( and also another drift along to a different topic ... but I'm hardly one to talk.). Animal experimentation is increasingly unnecessary and wildly over-used - I suspect (from what I've read) its redundancy could be hastened exponentially were the appropriate incentives in place.

 

[123xyz]

You're bringing some valid observations to the table. I've had many of the same about animals in my vicinity. Do magpies exhibit social behavior? Do magpies have intelligence? Would magpies suffer if you tortured them? Yes, yes, yes. Is the next logical step to aver that the suffering of a magpie is the same as the suffering of a human being in a concentration camp?



Exactly? Or similar? Equal? Or approximate?

Why is it worth noting that we share characteristics with animals? We're animals. Nobody's disputing that. But we are a different kind of animal. Our capacity for joy, sorrow, happiness, and suffering, are orders of magnitude greater than that of magpies.

I'm having trouble sorting the separate strands of the various arguments. Aesthetics ? Or ... ?

The point of the magpie anecdotes was really to explain part of how I came to not hold/feel the distinction "in kind" you did/do (?) when passing the dog etc. Magpies in concentration camps ? Hmm, I wonder if that makes the Australian Raven the avian Gestapo ( they include infant magpies in their diet)?


"...obviously similar to exactly what you and I are..." was simply rhetorical emphasis ( yes, I'm allowed to invoke that once).


Just very quickly , perhaps another analogy regarding the PETA/Holocaust thing is to see the animal rights movement as , metaphorically (of course), a war. The PETA/Holocaust remarks and placards and so on are the shock troops , making the initial breach in the enemy's line with maximum firepower, force and ferocity. Following them up are the more conventional units , who occupy and patrol the now cleared areas in a far more sober manner...

 

[smiler]

It's amazing that this argument is still going on after all these years; Morrissey did not come up with the abbatoir=concentration camp analogy, nor did PETA.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Polish Jew who fled his country a few years before Hitler invaded and who lost family in the Nazi death camps is the man who penned the phrase: "in relation to animals, all men are Nazis; for the animals, it is an Eternal Treblinka." Singer was a Nobel prize-winning author, a humanitarian and a supporter of the notion of animals rights. He wasn't some armchair bleeding-heart, he watched the madness that gave rise to the concentration camps unfold, and he had no problem equating the industrial killing of animals with the horrors of man's inhumanity to man.

It doesn't matter if a chicken or a cow knows what a Nazi is, it matters that animals feel pain, that they suffer, that they are helpless and that they are killed in mind-numbing numbers with no compassion whatsoever. The Nazis dehumanized their victims; they were killing "vermin" and not men, women and children. We devalue animals to the extent that they are now "harvested"; the same desensitization is required to kill on an industrial scale. The lack of compassion and empathy is what allowed the Nazis to slaughter their victims, and it is the same lack of compassion and empathy that allows us to slaughter millions upon millions of animals every single day. We are not talking about moral equivalence, we are talking about the human capacity for disengagement with other living things, about notions of human mercy, justice and the right to petition a loving god. It is a profound philosophical point.

As for "Meat is Murder" being literally true, it is about as factual as "Silence=Death" another phrase from the period that changed minds and saved lives. Morrissey should be very proud of his song, and its continuing emotional resonance.

Great post^^^

 

[smiler]

I was replying to a specific criticism of my argument. I'm well aware of the moral hazards of determining whether one kind of human is the same as another. You bring up a human being who's a "vegetable", so to speak, but there's also the matter of cloning. I mentioned this earlier. It's a serious dilemma which is fast approaching. A day will come when we can "grow" humans and harvest them for body parts. What are we going to do then?

I don't have an answer. And I don't intend to articulate a rubric for distinguishing between one kind of person and another. That's a mistake. I do hold that there's a difference between human beings and animals. That's a distinction I make within the context of certain arguments, as a rhetorical necessity; the subject is endless, and I think we can certainly get into lots of interesting discussions about what constitutes the human and the non-human-- there are many fascinating ways to approach the subject, from science fiction movies like "Blade Runner" to academic works like one of my favorites, "Vibrant Matter", authored by Jane Bennett-- but I think it's very important to frame the question properly because these dialogues tend to drift into meaningless cul-de-sacs. We can talk for hours, days, weeks, but Bishop Berkeley's common-sense test should always be accounted for in any philosophical dialogue: in this case, when I pass a dog in the street or a cockroach in the gutter I find I'm not terribly uncertain about humanity's place in the natural order.

This conversation has already drifted, because my original intent was not to argue about whether a cat's life is equal to a woman's life. The core topic here is whether or not it's appropriate to draw a comparison between the Holocaust and the meat industry. You call the objection an aesthetic one, a term I loosely accept, but aesthetics matter in the realm of persuasion. PETA and Morrissey have chosen to use a shock tactic in an attempt to change how people think about meat. It's totally inappropriate, in my view, but even if I'm wrong, there's simply no question that for every one person they convince with the KFC=Treblinka argument they're alienating hundreds and maybe thousands of others. Remember, if the life of a chicken has the same value and dignity as the life of a man, then Ingrid Newkirk is hurting the beings she's trying to protect if every PETA campaign creates a penny's-worth of vegetarians and a pound's-worth of people who dismiss her as a fruitcake radical. Ask yourself a question. If you can save the lives of 100 cows sticking to an ideal which most people do not and never will share, or 10,000 cows by using milder, more practical arguments to convince people to give up meat, which path would you follow? Which path would you follow, knowing lives are at stake-- lives you philosophically hold to have the same value as your own?

You know, the PETA campaign is very much like comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis in other areas of debate. It's like Godwin's Law, on the Internet. Eventually everything boils down to the crudest, most reductive, least helpful comparisons. When it reaches that point a switch is flipped. People just turn off. Must every evil on the planet look like a dictator with a bad moustache? Do we not have the language to change our society into a compassionate and caring one without linking dinner to the gravest atrocities in human history? Am I such a mindless bastard that I can't sympathize with the plight of a cow in a slaughterhouse or a rat in a laboratory cage without being whacked in the head with a comparison to Nazis? It's completely insulting.

You say there's room for both kinds of campaigns. To some extent that's true. I happen to think that songs like "Meat Is Murder" serve a tremendous purpose and do a lot of good. However, in the larger picture, when you look at these causes, I really think the target audience needs to be considered. I'm been a Smiths fan for a long time. I've known people who were deeply affected by "Meat Is Murder" and changed their lives because of it. I've also met people who not only laughed at the song but heaped scorn on Morrissey for his vegetarianism. I'm not confused about which side I'm on, but many times, when I meet otherwise good people-- decent, caring people who abhor cruelty and generally support progressive causes-- who acrimoniously dismiss "left-wing radical neo-hippie bullshit", I have to ask myself, is it the message they don't like, or how the message is getting to them? Are they people who can't bring themselves to join the cause because of the people recruiting them? Again, if lives are at stake, these aren't trivial questions.

Aparently you know better than Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Polish Jew who fled his country a few years before Hitler invaded and who lost family in the Nazi death camps