A New Process and a New Path

A note of warning: I'm attempting to use P’s language recognition software in order to make the process of blogging a little faster than its usual snail's pace. Of course this may mean that it will take longer - I don't know, I've never use something like this before. I'm certainly going to have to take a while before I get used to how to input punctuation.

At least it's fairly intuitive.

It takes me so long to get a blog post written, usually, that by the time it's done or mostly done, the topic is or feels irrelevant now. I have a very long, incomplete post that will not be posted - at all, ever - and I may in fact delete it from my computer. It was useful for organizing my thoughts, but… Let's just say that some things could not be unsaid if someone else read that document.

I have two new topics now that I need to blog about or write about or whatever: cruelty to animals, and anger. These two don't actually go together, but I'm not sure which one I'm writing about now. We'll just have to see.

I'm taking a course in university this term called Animals and Society. More accurately it would be Nonhuman Animals and Human Society. That should be a clue to the direction in which the professor is taking this course. We're not going to be learning just about the historical and current use of animals in society, but rather what animals have meant to societies in the past and the present and how they have been used and, most commonly, abused. (Can you tell I'm having trouble telling Dragon to input commas?) We have four books to read this term – four whole books – the first of which was Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. I looked at it and said, "Holy crap, this thing is 250 pages long. I'm not reading this in two weeks."

Two days later, I was done it.

First of all, it's well-written. I had no trouble imagining Peter Singer sitting across from me in a coffee shop, politely and reasonably talking to me about a cause which he felt, honestly, was just. In the course of the book he details the way that in 1990, farm animals and research animals were being used, and abused – horribly. Given that recently, I signed an online petition asking for the end of use of gestation crates for pigs – a device in which pregnant pigs are held for their entire pregnancy so that they do not waste energy by, say, turning around – conditions have not entirely improved since then.

He makes the most convincing argument I've ever heard or read for vegetarianism. He appeals to my utilitarian morals, suggesting what seems very logical – that the suffering and life of one creature should not be used for the trivial enjoyment of another. He is not claiming that we should stop carnivores from eating herbivores, or that we can't have companion animals – a claim from such organizations as PETA that bothers me deeply, as the animals in my life have been some of the most beloved people I've known. I understand their stance but cannot take it. Peter Singer, however, simply wishes animals to not suffer pain if it can be avoided – and he points out that there are ways in which it is absolutely avoidable, easily, if we only cared to try.

I've been enjoying learning new dishes to cook that involve meat. I've been making beef stew, and I tried making pulled pork recently. But I'm not so attached to meat that now, as I really think about that this piece of food came from the leg or chest or backside of a cow or pig or chicken, I wouldn't consider never eating this again. Or maybe I should say reducing my consumption of it – another thing that Peter Singer suggests that appeals to me is that since this is an attempt to reduce suffering, any efforts reduce suffering. I can help by eating less, or almost none, or none – the amount that I help is mediated and controlled by this, but eating less does not mean not helping at all.

Since I began reading the book, I have consumed only (of animal products) a small amount of beef broth, and some products containing milk, eggs and cheese. It's only been four days – I realize that's not very long, and it doesn't mean that I'm committed to going vegetarian. However, I really care so little about what I nurish myself on, provided that it's not revolting, that if one choice makes an animal with nerves suffer and die and another choice makes a plant without nerves die, I think I will choose the path of less harm.

As a side comment: I wasn't sure for a while about the idea of animal sacrifice with anesthetic. Now I realize that there are much worse things going on in this world, and that if an animal has had the chance to live a good life and then receives an injection and is then killed painlessly, the amount of suffering is virtually nil. Compare this to the procedure of castrating cows and pigs without anesthetic and I think the animal sacrifice is a much more humane process. (This is sort of, but also sort of not, in response to an old blog post from someone else, who knows who they are.) I think that the amount of harm done could be easily canceled out by supporting the end of animal suffering elsewhere.

The day after I finished the Peter Singer book, I attended an animal rights protest at my university. I had not known until the day I finished the book that my university's medical research involves vivisection – the process of cutting animals open while still alive. Given what I had just been reading about the ways in which animals are tortured for science, and more importantly the ways in which they are tortured in mass quantities repeatedly for trivial scientific gains, or no gains at all, this new knowledge hit a nerve. I joined a small group of people yesterday, holding signs on the sidewalk in the freezing cold and wind and having our pictures taken by a small number of newspaper photographers. Not a lot of people seemed to see the protest, but I feel like I performed a civic duty that day. Last term I was studying ancient Greece and, especially, ancient Athens, and it felt very significant to me that a man who did not participate in public life was considered selfish in that time and place. I feel like simply voting in elections is not enough to change society in the ways that I feel it needs to be changed, and that I have a responsibility to try to make that change. This is part of being Memory Walker. I have a knowledge of history and the human mind and of society, and that knowledge tells me strongly that I cannot sit back when I know that something is wrong and let it continue.

I could be wrong, of course. But if I think carefully before acting, I will hopefully avoid the majority of error – and fearing to act in case I'm wrong is what has paralyzed me for many years. Failure to act in a situation where action should have been taken is also wrong.

(This took me under an hour. I'm pretty sure that this could've taken me several hours to write by hand . Even with the stops and starts, this was a much more efficient process, and if P allows me to continue using her computer, I think I will.)