Think about a person who forces a puppy into the microwave because it's fun to watch him suffer. Think about it for a moment and try to imagine how you would feel or what you might be willing to do to the torturer. Replace the pit bulls Michael Vick exploited for your family dog. Now, read what follows.
"Having granted some protections to animals," Matthew Scully writes, "we are constantly confronted with the logic of our own laws, troubled by perfectly rational connections between the random "wanton" acts of cruelty the law forbids and the systematic, institutional cruelties it still permits. If this animal is to be protected, why not his identical one, too?"
Mr. Scully's insight is right on and should be applied to our actions as well: "we are constantly confronted with the logic of our own [actions], troubled by perfectly rational connections between the random "wanton" acts of cruelty that [we would feel justified in punishing the guilty party or at least argue that some moral censure is rightfully called for] and the systematic, institutional cruelties [we] still permit [and enthusiastically support]. If this animal is to be protected, why not his identical one, too?"
"Institutional cruelties"? Consider the rape (on what is literally referred to as the "rape rack" in the industry) and impregnation of "dairy cows," that then leads to the forceful removal of the baby cow and the use of these now lactating milk-production factories until they are "spent" or when the lactation stops; when this occurs, the process occurs again, over and over and over. What happens when these milk-production factories, formerly known as animals not things, stop producing milk? They are sent to the same slaughterhouses that most of us wouldn't dare look into to see what is actually going on. For another example, consider this quote by Joseph Wood Krutch: "When a man wantonly destroys the work of man, we call him a vandal, when he actively destroys one of the works of Nature, we call him a sportsman" (a.k.a., a murderer of animals for fun).
Just think about it for a moment and try to tell me that this doesn't sound perfectly rational, a spot on assessment of our moral schizophrenia.
so the author is lumping together a lot of very different issues here. with regard to the cow raping issue, every living organism (plants and animals) exploits its resources to their fullest potential for one goal: to propagate its species. in the case of humans there are activist groups protesting almost all of our exploitations: pita- protesting animal exploitation, environmentalists-protesting almost every land exploitation etc.... the reality of the situation is our human population (~ 5 billion in total) would be significantly smaller without these exploitations and trying to stop one or all of these exploitations is an uphill battle that is near impossible to win because it goes against a the basic goal every living organism is programmed to do- propagate life as much as possible.
Patrick,
Thanks for the response. Have you signed the petition yet?
The bulk of your argument is interesting and I think that it deserves a proper response. So, I will consider the necessity of exploitation and the logic of your position in a post.
However, I think your response misses the point of Mr. Scully's argument.
We believe it's appropriate, even necessary to protect our companion animals from "wanton" acts of cruelty. If we are honest with ourselves we believe a priori that dogs, for example, should not be castrated without an anesthetic because the pain would simply be too great to bear and that there is something wrong with that. The logic of this argument is simple, as Mr. Scully alludes to: We ought to minimize pain as much as possible because unnecessary pain is something to be avoided; ergo as we know our dogs to be capable of subjectively experiencing the pain of castration without anesthesia, we intuitively believe that this should not occur. If it does occur we feel that little moral pang within ourselves. If you don't feel that pang, we, as a society, call you names like "Ted Bundy" or "Jeffrey Damher," right - serial killers begin by torturing dogs in this way, for example.
Mr. Scully, then, asks why our logic is not extended to its ethical conclusion. For example, bulls are regularly castrated and de-horned without anesthesia as the expense is too great, and as the law says it's not necessary, the expense is offset by avoiding anesthesia altogether. Now, these actions could only unreasonably and unparsimoniously be described as not causing pain in the bull. However, this kind of treatment has been "institutionalized" without even a second thought, as Mr. Scully argues.
So, you say that I have lumped several different issues together, but I don't believe I have. What I have done is cite examples of institutionalized cruelty that, when the logic of our anti-cruelty laws and commonly held intuitive beliefs are extended to its conclusion, would certainly be considered wrong.
It's moral schizophrenia because we don't recognize the irrationality in protecting one group of animals from X,Y, and Z; while instutionalizing X,Y, and Z in our treatment of another group of animals identical in every morally relevant way to the protected group.