I was listening to an episode of Hidden Brain on Thomas Jefferson’s stance on slavery, and how he was “hypocritical in the way that many people are hypocritical, in that all of us are hypocritical when we have an intellectual belief about something, but we don’t have the will to act upon those beliefs. Jefferson did not know what to do about slavery.” From what I’ve read, it seems like Jefferson ultimately knew that slavery was morally wrong, yet continued to own slaves through most of his life.
I’ve thought about whether a similar situation applies for most people in the modern day who continue to eat meat. There may have been a time in history where meat was an essential source of nutrients and calories for humans to survive, but I don’t believe you can credibly claim that is applicable in modern, first-world societies today. It seems to me, then, that the only reason that people eat meat nowadays is because it is enjoyable. Yet, I can’t help but feel that much of modern meat production these days is morally wrong, especially factory farming - animals are often forced to live in deplorable conditions, and there is often very significant environmental impact associated with raising animals for food, from the impact to water usage and local water quality, to greenhouse gas emissions (especially for lamb and beef), to the inefficiency involved in growing crops to feed animals instead of people directly. But even in the most humane situations (say, hunting wild game), you still have to kill an animal in order to eat meat, which seems like a moral wrong when it’s unnecessary for our survival.
I do wonder if, hundreds of years from now, people will look back at people eating meat in the 21st century as a despicable thing to do - and given that they will likely have significantly tastier meat substitutes in the future, those future people probably won’t fully understand why people stuck to eating meat for so long, and why meat eating was so ingrained into our cultures and traditions.
While I have significantly reduced the quantity of meat that I consume in recent years, it’s just too delicious for me to give up completely, and while I feel a little guilty about eating meat sometimes, the thing that bothers me more is that I DON’T feel more guilty about something that I intellectually know is wrong. Are most people in the first world hypocrites for continuing to eat meat even though they know it is morally wrong, or do most people think that it is morally neutral/morally good to eat meat? If the latter, what arguments do people use to justify the eating of meat in the modern age?
I stopped eating meat two years ago after watching a 10 second clip on Twitter. A nice ribeye steak is still about the tastiest thing I have ever eaten, but I have made a decision and while that was my personal road to Damascus moment, I am not into telling people who might have different values than I do to stop eating meat.
I don’t think it is morally wrong to eat meat. I understand many will disagree. Though not an essential nutrient in the sense alternatives exist, it remains an important one. Meat is more filling than many foods. It provides some nutrients difficult to obtain elsewhere. It is satisfying and brings pleasure.
Consumption is different from problems of the environment and minimizing suffering. I care about these problems and think ways can be found to improve them. These problems exist for many foods which are not meat. Because of these and other problems, reducing meat consumption may be reasonable.
Heh, no. I just don’t make the axiomatic assumption that it’s bad to kill animals. (Humans excepted.)
Now, we can quibble about the circumstances of the killing, whether it involved gratuitous cruelty and such, but if we put that part aside I simply don’t consider killing animals to be inherently bad.
As you pointed out, even slave owners like Jefferson saw the immorality of slavery.
There is no equivalent consensus on the morality of eating meat. You may be certain that it is immoral but there are plenty of people who do not agree with that belief.
Does this have to do with the sentience or sapience of the animals, vs. humans? I am just wondering what arguments can be made to justify the killing of animals, that couldn’t also be applied to killing humans who are significantly mentally disabled?
Nope - it has to do with classifications as people. It’s not about sapience, it’s about arbitrary classification as to what a person is.
Some people may consider dogs or cats or birds or fish or cockroaches or flies or bacteria to be people. That’s their privilege. However I do not, and my morality is based on my own beliefs, opinions, and conclusions.
There is a book out that shows that some meat consumption is GOOD for the environment.
Many animals can live happily on garbage or silage. Others can exist on land unsuitable for farming. It is by no means hyopcricial to eat meat- environmentally speaking. However, eating less meat would be good for us all, for our health and for the environment.
Meat: A Benign Extravagance
Simon Fairlie
However, your postulate seems to be that eating meat is morally wrong, not environmentally wrong.
Well, sex before marriage, having more than 2 kids (this is environmentally good policy) , drinking alcohol, smoking dope, tobacco use, driving a car or truck that doesnt get 30MPH, driving any fossil fuel vehicle, Nuke power, Not using nuke power, gambling, divorce, Gay sex, Disapproving of gay sex, contraceptives, NOT using contraceptives, ete etc etc are all considered not moral by some significant % of people. You cant please them all.
Thus, honestly, I live my life by my moral views, you can live your live by your moral rules, and you trying to jam your moral views down my throat is absolutely immoral. Much more immoral than eating meat. By my set of morals and ethics , eating meat is by no means wrong.
I think that a lot of meat consumption is immoral (well, really, I think it’s that most meat production is immoral), and yet I eat meat, so I might be the sort of person that this OP is directed at.
Part of it is, I’m sure, that I like the taste of meat and convince myself that it’s not that bad to do. But I think there’s also the issue that there are myriad issues that I could focus my time and attention on. I could easily come up with dozens that I think are bigger moral problems that I’m not really doing anything about. Eating meat is one that is particularly salient (I eat meat most days), but it’s not clear to me that changing my diet is the best way for me to focus my energy on moral causes.
I’m a meat eater, but you’re kind of making OPs point because most of the things you mentioned are pretty easy to separate into actions/beliefs that have victims and ones that don’t. Something like the morality of gay sex isn’t really a “you have your values, I have mine” question. There is simply no reason to have any view of any type of consensual sex as morally different from another, and people who are against homosexuality are both wrong and immoral.
I think taking the view that inflicting unnecessary suffering on anyone or anything that can experience suffering is immoral makes participating in industrial meat farming immoral. I don’t think this is particularly a controversial view.
My moral defence for eating meat is the fact that I am a human and humans are omnivores.
Now if you want to make an argument for the, god help me, ethical treatment of animals I would be on board. When I can, I buy animal products from ethical producers and I for sure wouldn’t support anyone who treated their livestock poorly.
To be fair, though, every practice that is nowadays unambiguously held to be immoral has had in the past its own Old Guard making this exact same argument.
Slaveholders in the American South were outraged that abolitionists were trying to interfere with their slaveholding practices: nobody was making the abolitionists own slaves themselves, so why couldn’t they just mind their own damn business? Same for domestic abusers, dogfighters, etc.: “I don’t tell you how to lead your life, so don’t tell me how to lead mine”.
Nowadays, though, for the sake of protecting their victims, we do “jam our moral views down the throats” of those who want to follow such practices.
It remains to be seen whether the anti-carnivory movement will end up in the long run being more like the abolitionist movement to get rid of chattel slavery or the temperance movement to ban alcohol consumption.