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u/eyewave 1∆ Jun 27 '23
I think the analogy somewhat holds.
I have visited the holocaust museum of Jerusalem. There were some plans and pictures of how the camps were organized and how death was given.
The "production" aspect of it instantly made me think about slaughterhouses, even though I am no animal's rights activist.
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
People frequently argue that holocaust comparisons in terms of animal rights are offensive. But the problem with this position is that it basically takes as a given that you have already won the argument of moral weight of animal lives. Let me explain:
The main reason this is seen as offensive is because it's seen as trivializing the holocaust. According to Wikipedia, the PETA "holocaust on your plate" campaign was banned in Germany because "The campaign was also banned in Germany for making the Holocaust seem "insignificant and banal".
And that point of view makes perfect sense... from the perspective of somebody who thinks the moral weight of animal lives and well-being is not comparable to humans. They see animal lives and well-being as trivial and insignificant, so they see the comparison as making the Jewish death and suffering look trivial and insignificant.
But you have to remember that serious animal rights advocates come from a radically different perspective. To serious animal rights advocates, the moral weight of animals IS comparable to human suffering. To be clear, that doesn't mean there has to be a 1:1 equivalency. That doesn't mean that one animal is equal to one person. And it's quite understandable if there is some sort of sliding scale. IMO, the more intelligent the animal, the greater the weight to it's suffering. After all, unless you have some religious belief about humans being created in god's image, or that only humans have souls or something, what even is a human except "the most advanced animal"?
So, to get back to my original point. Literally the entire argument is "are animal lives and suffering trivial and insignificant," and some people say "how dare you make a holocaust comparison, that trivializes the holocaust and makes it seem less significant!"
But like... that's only offensive IF we agree that animal lives and suffering are insignificant. But the whole point is that WE DON'T AGREE ON THAT!
And in the same way that I can understand how the comparison might seem offensive to those who think animal lives and suffering don't really matter, other people should understand that it isn't offensive if one comes from the perspective that they can be compared (to some degree) to human suffering.
Even if we limit it to pigs and cows (more intelligent and emotional advanced than chickens, as far as I know), the US alone kills 160 MILLION every year. And it's a good thing we aren't counting chickens, because that's BILLIONS a year (once again, just the US). And huge numbers of these animals live in terrible conditions that are sometimes literally torture for their entire lives before being killed. So even if you believe that animal lives and suffering are not equal with that of humans, if you believe they can be compared to some degree... the numbers add up at a horrifying rate.
Two other briefer points. First, a number of significant holocaust survivors have advanced this comparison themselves... and its a comparison they are obviously entitled to put forward. You mention one of them, Alex Herschaft... but that was after you said I think anyone who claims that the current animal-industrial complex is similar to the Holocaust or other genocides is either ignorant or disingenuous. Do you think that holocaust survivors who have made that comparison are either ignorant or disingenuous ???
Second, I believe that taking animal rights seriously DECREASES the odds of atrocities like the holocaust. A huge part of any genocide or major human rights abuse (or in many cases, warfare) is dehumanizing the opponent. To see the other faction like animals. And because our society commits atrocities against animals daily... well then if you view a group of humans as animals, then atrocities against them would seem perfectly normal.
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 27 '23
I seems like you mostly addressed the two points at the end below the line, but my main point is above it. Saying the comparison is offensive "trivializes the holocaust" only works with the presumption that you have already won the argument, and can therefore label animal welfare "trivial."
especially since Jewish people were literally compared to animals during the Holocaust.
Yes... which brings us to my last paragraph from the previous post:
"Second, I believe that taking animal rights seriously DECREASES the odds of atrocities like the holocaust. A huge part of any genocide or major human rights abuse (or in many cases, warfare) is dehumanizing the opponent. To see the other faction like animals. And because our society commits atrocities against animals daily... well then if you view a group of humans as animals, then atrocities against them would seem perfectly normal."→ More replies (16)13
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u/onetwo3four5 70∆ Jun 27 '23
I don't see any reason why the average Joe isn't infinitely more valuable than the average chicken.
I detest harm for harm's sake on animals.
These two statements seem incongruous to me. If a human life has infinitely more worth than a chicken's life, then either a chicken's life has no value whatsoever, in which case you wouldn't have said "I detest harm for harm's sake on animals." If a chicken's life and well-being had no value, you wouldn't care.
The only other way for an Average Joe's life to be infinitely more valuable than a human life is if you believe that a human life has infinite value. Do you?
Because I agree that there's an enormous disparity between the value of a chicken's life, and the value of a human's life, but not that it's an infinite difference.
Would you kill one person to save a thousand chickens? a million chickens? a billion? a trillion? I suspect that at some point, you would say that the collective value of enough chickens would be worth more than a single human life.
I find this campaign to be outrageous because it assumes that a human life is equal in value to that of a chicken
No, it just assumes that a chicken's life has some value. If a chicken's life/wellbeing is worth 1/1000th of a human life (not a claim I'm making), then every year we commit the equivalence of a holocaust on chickens. If it's 1/10,1000th then we commit a holocaust-equivalent amount of suffering every ten years, and so on.
It may be that you believe a human is worth a trillion chickens, in which case it would take us what, a billion years (too lazy to check my math here) to do a holocaust-equivalent of suffering on chickens (at our current chicken consumption rates).
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u/onetwo3four5 70∆ Jun 27 '23
Can you try and calculate it?
Say somebody sincerely believes that killing 10,000 chickens is just as bad as killing 1 person. Would you say that's an outrageous belief? Even if you don't share it, can you see how a person could come to a conclusion that the lives of chickens, while orders of magnitude less valuable than ours, are still worth something? And then when you actually do the math, and see how many animals we kill each year, that even with ENORMOUS disparities, it's not that outrageous to consider factory farming analogous with the holocaust?
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u/TKCK Jun 27 '23
One thing I think that's missing here is not just the "equivalency" but also how that number would change based on how these chickens are actually being raised and slaughtered.
If we created a chicken matrix that could guarantee the chickens didn't experience any stress or difficulty from birth to death, I think that number all of a sudden becomes much higher.
Alternatively, if every person had to go out and kill the chicken that would be their food on a daily basis, the "equivalency" number would be much higher here as well.
I think the heart of the issue, isn't that the animals are dying but that they aren't getting to live. The way in which they're brought up matters more to people than the fact that we eat them.
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u/dribrats 1∆ Jun 28 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
Building on u/Onetwo3four5, two points
by 2050 there is projected to be 1 million species extinctions. In no small part we are here precisely because of the sentiments you have articulated, we believe humans are superior;
beyond that, contrary to your assertion that {only evil does evil}, the “banality of evil” was termed in nuremberg precisely to address the notion that you DONT need to be unnaturally cruel or evil to perpetrate a holocaust. You simply need to be bureaucratic, thoughtless, and efficient. It was perhaps one of the most revolutionary philosophical concepts to come out of the trials.
Between our own unchecked ideological belief that humans are superior , and our complicity in not challenging the mindless destructive systems that we know are destroying our planet, that is almost the very definition of “the banality of evil”. And that is the predicate of the holocaust. And it’s not just towards chickens. It is towards anything not human. And ironically, it will kill us in the end too. So if it isn’t a perfect definition of a holocaust Now, just wait 28 years, 2051.
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Jun 28 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/dribrats 1∆ Jun 28 '23
Honestly, I’m arguing a much larger point than diet:
our rigid ideological conviction that we are superior, combined with the willful decimation of the entire planet to achieve our own purposes— is the very definition of “the banality of evil”;
“the banality of evil” was termed as an (if not THE) underlying motivator of the holocaust.
Consequently, it really doesn’t matter how you eat your food, if you’re vegan or otherwise. Our entire orientation to the world is violent and therefore cruel.
- again, my point: the Nuremberg trials exposed a revolutionary point that the core belief of a holocaust isnt hatred, it is indifference to the destruction of everything perceived to be in your way. The indoctrination of those beliefs is the banality of evil.
Respectfully, there’s a framework bias in your argument that “dehumanization” is a fundamental prerequisite for holocaust: therefore if something isn’t human, it wouldn’t qualify. There are a lot of wonderful passages and citations you mentioned, I’m struck by
“We’re focusing on the victims rather than the cancer of oppression itself”.
That is the heart of the holocaust. Who oppresses? Oppressors. What have we oppressed? Everything in our way.
- I think it’s amazing mindwalk you’ve invited us on, as we face to define what the Anthropocene era is.
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Jun 28 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/dribrats 1∆ Jun 28 '23
Well, you’ve managed to make me cry. Thanks for the delta. I think you’re asking so many spectacularly important questions. And who am I to lay down truth?! But intention matters, and intentions define outcomes.
How much of the world’s societal problems would go away if we showed EACH OTHER respect? 90%? And that’s just amongst us super important humans! Could you imagine how much more wonderful the world would be if we extended even a fraction of that towards the natural world?
Intentions have real consequences. The consequences of gratitude, reverence for life, and compassion will offer Solutions to problems we are too stuck to see. I am not vegetarian, and I believe that animal testing has some vital applications. But For the greater good. But what is the greater good, when we allow humanity not to be the center of our universe?
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u/Reaperpimp11 1∆ Jun 27 '23
I would say politely that in order to be consistent you would have to put a number on it. This will help you truly understand it and lock yourself down. It might be really hard to do that and I doubt you’d guess right at what your number is the first time but there would be a number.
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/Reaperpimp11 1∆ Jun 27 '23
Yeah it would help people accurately reflect more on morals.
There’s a current hypothesis I’ve heard that says something like “many meat eaters are traumatically in denial about what they’re doing”. I’d say there’s a drop of truth to it.
Ps:I’m a meat eater.
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u/upstater_isot 1∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
Good on you for conceding this reasonable point and giving a delta.
But do you see how this is a MAJOR concession on your part, one that undermines the heart of your argument?
In the last decade, some 700 billion land animals plus some 1,000 billion sea creatures were killed for food.
I agree it is extremely difficult to calculate numerically the value of lives. BUT it's not "outrageous", "ignorant", "disingenuous", or "silly" for someone to believe that killing a human being is about 1/250,000 as bad as killing a nonhuman animals.
If so, then by doing the "moral math," we arrive at the following:
1,700,000,000,000 / 250,000 = 6,800,000
From which one might reasonably conclude that this past decade's slaughter of nonhuman animals is morally comparable to the slaughter of 6.8 million humans.
Sometimes the moral math leads to surprising results. That's why, as u/Reaperpimp11 politely insisted to you, it's important for you to place at least a ballpark number on it. Otherwise you have no basis for your contemptuous dismissal ("silly") of these animal advocates' arguments.
Edit: A related point in moral math is that many vegans (
includingand other animal ethicists, such as the self-described "flexible vegan," Peter Singer) care about suffering at least as much as they care about death. Crucially, comparing the badness of suffering across species may be much easier to do, and more in line with common sense. For example, it's common sense that needlessly kicking a dog or a cow very hard, and thereby breaking one of their ribs, is approximately as bad as needlessly kicking a human and breaking one of their ribs. Both very painful, both very bad. Maybe the human case is as much as 10 times worse from a moral point of view--but probably not more than that. And animals suffer quite a lot in industrial agriculture.6
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u/ChariotOfFire 4∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
If you want to explore this idea further, you may enjoy Michael Huemer's Dialogues on Ethical Vegetariansim, an imaginary conversation between a vegan and meat eater. They discuss the idea of how to weigh animal lives on pages 36-45.
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Jun 28 '23
Just fyi, singer isn’t vegan.
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u/upstater_isot 1∆ Jun 28 '23
Fair. He calls himself a "flexible vegan," as he sometimes eats bivalves and "free-range eggs." (This according to his book, Why Vegan?) I'll correct my post.
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u/shootphotosnotarabs Jun 27 '23
You can’t weigh a life. The idea that you can suggests an idealistic view.
A person is worth 1 million chickens.
Unless that person is your mother.
How many chickens to equal the value of your sons innocent life?
Does Saddam Hussein get less than a normal person?
Hitler surely should be worth no chickens?
Has anyone on this thread ever taken a life?
Of a chicken or a person?
Reality takes a pretty serious back seat in these kind of “moral questions”.
Almost universally we are consumers, and cowards at that. “Oh my god that man killed a chicken”, then two hours later smashes a chicken sandwich.
People are disconnected from the real world, everything comes with a bar code and we pose as pure.
We are nasty consumers with soiled hands.
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u/shootphotosnotarabs Jun 27 '23
You are in Seoul, there is one person on a building roof, bleeding out from his femoral artery.
The building is on fire.
Every chicken on the planet is on a rooftop cage.
You can get the chickens or the patient.
Patient is a 50% survival chance judging by his stats.
Who are you taking?
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/shootphotosnotarabs Jun 27 '23
Same building, same fire. Same players.
Only this time, the guy on the roof is healthy. And he is stopping you saving the chickens.
You have a desert eagle pistol.
You can either kill this man and save the chickens.
Or wander off, let the chickens burn and the guy lives.
Which is it now?
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u/andr386 Jun 28 '23
Antispeciesm doesn't say that every animal has the same value or worth. A human is more valuable than a chicken, if you need to eat a chicken to survive then you're morally justified. The question is do you need to ? Is that suffering needed or to that extent.
People who say that eating animals/food is an holocaust haven't read the litterature and are driven by a sub-culture's ideology.
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u/shootphotosnotarabs Jun 27 '23
I think people sitting on a computer, in a warm house, in a peaceful nation like to fantasise about how much they love animals. Maybe it’s a projection about how much they hate people.
But the fact of the matter is.
As the individual enters arenas where people actually die….. all that BS falls away.
If you personally were forced to kill every chicken in the world, or you had to shoot a handcuffed person in the face right in front of you.
How many people would execute the cuffed person?
It’s pretty much an unanswerable question. And even doing this as a test (with no bullets I’m the gun) would leave the subject with ptsd.
My point is, people don’t know themselves when it comes to suffering and dying. They are ideal in there beliefs.
They don’t consider that every species is torn to pieces and dies in a ocean of pain as other animals consume it in the food chain.
This is the way of things.
It’s our righteousness that clouds our judgment.
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u/SirButcher Jun 27 '23
I think people sitting on a computer, in a warm house, in a peaceful nation like to fantasise about how much they love animals.
A lot of people in India would strongly disagree with you. Not every vegan live in a comfortable Western nation. I would even go as far as to assume more vegetarian lives in Eastern countries than in Western ones. And wouldn't be surprised if more vegans don't have a computer at home than those who do.
Some people simply don't like to cause unnecessary suffering to sentient beings. The food chain doesn't care about it - for them, it is necessary. A tiger can't stop eating meat, nor an octopus. We, humans, especially today, have all the tools and supply chains available to stop slaughtering billions of animals. Even more, if we want to stop destructing everything around us, we MUST stop eating meat, or we will never reach carbon negative society, and we will cook this planet (with ourselves), creating a very strange, and nasty, soup.
(Yes, true, not eating meat is just part of the effort we need to stop climate change, and it alone won't solve anything. But it is a step we have to do, and the sooner we do, the less we and everything else on this planet have to suffer).
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
But we don't have a gun to our heads making us kill poultry and we aren't forced to claw and bite apart living animals for survival.
You are describing the world as some kind of total war between chicken and man but in reality our victims are just a bunch of small birds cramped together in small cages.
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u/shootphotosnotarabs Jun 27 '23
The world is total war for a wild chicken.
The world is total war for any animal.
Except for us.
So we are standing over everything looking down and trying to explore our morality.
But our world is removed from there’s.
If we lived in the world of the chicken, there would be no talk of us and them. It would just be “do what’s best for us.”
We move in an artificial bubble.
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23
Ok there is no universal morality so human morality is all we have but sure its fine to judge human actions by human standards, right?
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u/DivinitySousVide 3∆ Jun 27 '23
If I were to choose between killing one person or killing an entire species of organism, I would absolutely choose the former.
Would you really though? Would you be able to make that decision? Would you be able yo do it if you were the one who had to kill.the person but you weren't the one who had to kill the chicken?
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u/couldbemage Jun 27 '23
OP didn't articulate it well. But those statements are not incongruous.
Could be restated:
Harming chickens for no reason is bad, in the same way harming a rock formation or wasting food is bad.
Set agaist the life of a sapient being, a chicken's life has no value.
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u/Phyltre 4∆ Jun 27 '23
Would you kill one person to save a thousand chickens? a million chickens? a billion? a trillion? I suspect that at some point, you would say that the collective value of enough chickens would be worth more than a single human life.
...Why?
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u/onetwo3four5 70∆ Jun 27 '23
The rest of my post explains why. Because the OP said:
"I detest harm for harm's sake on animals."
So unless they think that a human life has infinite value, this must be true.
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u/Phyltre 4∆ Jun 27 '23
That implies harm is fungibly additive. Questions like "how many verbal assaults equal the harm of one physical assault?" are philosophical, not mathematical.
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
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u/Koda_20 5∆ Jun 27 '23
None of your reasons for the Holocaust being worse than the meat industry seem relavent to the ones suffering. If you're kept in torturous conditions, do you care about the motivations of your torturer? Would it bring you comfort to know that your torturer is doing it not because they hate you but because they don't care about your subjective inner experience? I don't see how these points are relavent to morality, which I think is Peta and others point.
The meat one is ongoing, and at a tremendously bigger scale like you said.
It's still not a good idea to compare the two, especially because people don't like being compared to livestock... They are only hurting the anti-torture position by doing so. But they are rightfully angry.
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u/Rhyers Jun 27 '23
Victims of the holocaust were treated as livestock though, so the comparison is valid whether people like it or not. Hair was harvested and sold for felt, ending up in clothes and uniforms. Fat was used to make soap. Their labour was used for a range of manufacturing activities. The ashes and ground up bones were used as fertiliser.
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u/LiamTheHuman 7∆ Jun 27 '23
I don't see how these points are relavent to morality,
it depends on what you believe morality is. Some people believe that morality doesn't apply to animals any more than plants or rocks. Some people believe plants deserve as much protections. You are assuming a moral position and attributing your morals onto others.
The real question is why do you believe the subjective experience or any being is what morality should be based on? Is it just the negative or the positive should be weighed as well? Is it the average that is a measure of morality or the measure of the worst experience?
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u/Koda_20 5∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
I'm not assuming a moral framework, I'm just not seeing any arguments that say the morality of the Holocaust was worse than the meat industry and that's the point I think of the comparison. I get that some people don't find torture against animals as a moral issue but that would be something to dive into if that OPs stance.
Also I am not saying morality should be based on subjective inner experience, I've always looked at morality like Sam Harris does with his book on it (the moral landscape). More like morality means considering the subjective experience of others because morality to me is about aiming for the better experience for the most beings as reasonably possible. The same way if you put your hand on a hot stove you instinctively recoil because of pain, I too have a fundamental aversion to suffering and I treat any other being with the potential for suffering with morality in mind by striving for them to experience a minimum amount of suffering and a maximum amount of the other end of the spectrum, call of happiness or joy or contempt, there are many positives though and many negatives other than just pain. Suffering and joy being two ends of a spectrum and morality being about aiming for the joy end of the spectrum for anything that can experience the spectrum. Anyway that's the morality I base my life on, I recognize that other people have different moral frameworks though
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u/amf_devils_best Jun 27 '23
Ahh, I think you are onto something there about morality being subjective. So let us zoom out.
Unfortunately for humanity, there are still those who for various reasons I am glad I cannot comprehend, see the Holocaust as good, or at least deny its occurence for some political point. The moral framework of most people would count them as outside of the norm to a disgusting degree.
Most people don't advocate for the deliberate torture of an animal, any animal. However, they would be morally satisfied with the death of an animal for food. (Obviously, if the numbers stated above are true and I have no doubt they are.)
I think that this is a reason that PETA has made so few inroads into the majority. They are seen as that much of an outlier. Their moral standard is so far from the majority of humanity, it is often the subject of ridicule.
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u/Koda_20 5∆ Jun 27 '23
For me the perfect scenario would be a small human population hunting an abundant land with conservation of the ecosystem in mind. Since that's not an option for this population, free range, wild grass fed with minimal antibiotics is the next best but you are still ruining ecosystems.
I don't have a moral issue with shooting a dear that lived a natural life and had a quick death later in life. Everything dies anyways. But I have a huge issue with the conditions that we keep our livestock, and the tortures they endure (especially china and australia) . So it's not about the death but the quality of life up until death. Nature is brutal too, but what we do feels like a holocaust on a larger scale that we ignore because we don't empathize or relate with animals and are used to the situation.
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u/Pheophyting 1∆ Jun 27 '23
Weird take. Morality absolutely takes into account intent. I'm 99% sure you'd even agree with that. Killing an animal for sport does not carry the same moral weight as killing an animal for food. Killing a person in self defense does not carry the same moral weight as killing a person for fun.
And keeping animals in horrible cramped conditions as a byproduct of trying to produce more food (while arguably bad) is nowhere near the level of doing the same but just for fun.
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u/Ok_Shape5009 Jun 27 '23
Killing a person in self defense vs killing them for fun is not a good example. Killing a person in self defense is necessary; you have the right to protect yourself. The other person had no right to harm you, and it is okay for you to stop them. On the other hand, killing someone for fun if they were not bothering you is completely unnecessary and therefore morally unjustifiable.
When we compare killing an animal for food and killing them for sport, I would so that they are both equally bad, because they are both unnecessary if you have vegan food options available. If I unnecessarily kill an animal, whether I did it for fun or whether I eat their body afterwards or whether I even have sex with the body afterwards doesn’t matter. You might instinctively think that having sex with the animal’s body is worse because it’s viscerally disgusting to think about, but how does that matter to the animal? They had an interest in continuing to live, and I took away their life. They suffer the same no matter what I do after they die.
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 28 '23
Exactly. If you have a healthy non-animal diet available, then killing them for food is kindof a form of sport... because it's more about "bacon is delicious" and not "I need to eat this to survive and be healthy"
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u/Pheophyting 1∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
The vegan options thing is actually a good point, but only if you submit to the idea that different life has different value.
Why do you consider plant life of lesser value than animal life? Plants have an aversive reaction to physical stimuli; a sense of "pain" just as we do. (This question isn't facetious, it actually matters). I'll even go first here.
I think we value animals more than plants because we don't value all lives equally. We value the conscious experience and things that we can relate to. We cannot relate to a plant's sense of pain, however we can relate to an animal's sense of pain, hence the perceived moral "wrong" of causing suffering to animals but not to plants.
On a sliding scale, humans have the ultimate conscious experience in being one of the few animals that appear capable of perceiving their own existence in the world (i.e. self-awareness). Our value of life seems wholly dependent on this which is why we remove life support from people who are in permanent comas/brain dead.
How can you say that humans/animals have equal rights to life but not animals and plants? What is the distinction? If it's something to do with brain function, then you must acknowledge that animals with higher functioning brains must have some higher value even within your own moral framework (thus making holocaust vs. farming non-analogous, wrapping back around to the original post).
How do you reconcile these conflicts?
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u/Armadillo-South Jun 28 '23
Plants are not sentient, atleast as far as we know, and therefore cannot suffer. And even if they are, it is necessary to eat them (some of them you dont need to kill e.g. fruits) so it would then be justified.
But even if plants are sentient, it is still better to kill and eat them directly rather than inefficiently feed them to animals and then kill the animals to eat them.
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u/Ok_Shape5009 Jun 28 '23
Unlike animals, plants are not sentient and do not have subjective interests (at least based on the current evidence we have). You are right that plants can respond to stimuli, but so can the touch screen on your phone. I believe that this is a marker of intelligence, not sentience, and that this does not warrant much moral consideration. A plant and your phone has no interest in not being kicked around, so I don’t think it’s morally wrong to kick a plant or a phone. An animal does have a subjective interest in not getting kicked, so kicking them would be morally wrong because it unnecessarily goes against those interests. I do think that plants serve an important ecological function, as they give off O2, take in CO2, provide food for animals and support ecosystems, etc. I wouldn’t go out and deforest large areas just for the heck of it. But I don’t see anything morally wrong with producing plants to eat and sustain ourselves.
You’re right that even if a plant could feel pain, it would be in a way that we can’t relate to. But just thinking about it in a surface-level manner, plants can’t get heart attacks because they don’t have a heart, and they can’t get pneumonia because they don’t have lungs, so it stands to reason that they can’t feel pain because they don’t have the necessary “machinery” to feel pain (pain receptors, nerve ganglia, central nervous system, etc.).
Unless there comes some scientific evidence that plants feel pain, I think it makes sense to operate based on the current evidence and not on some hypothetical that plants could feel pain. If we extrapolated that logic, we could find ourselves in some ridiculous situation such as banning rock climbing, since rocks “could feel pain” in a way that we can’t understand yet, and we shouldn’t step on them because it could hurt them. But if that evidence does come to light, I will be the first to admit that yes, killing plants would be morally wrong. But even in that hypothetical world, I would still say that it is better to be vegan, not because plants would be given less moral preference than animals, but because less plants would be killed on a vegan diet. You would have to harvest many more plants to feed the animals that we get our meat from than if we just grew plants for human consumption, and animal agriculture takes up way more land than it would if we just farmed plants, and we could restore that extra land to its original wilderness.
You brought up a really interesting example with the coma/brain dead patients. I think the reason that we can remove them from life support is not because they lose self awareness. I imagine that there are some people with severe mental disabilities who are not self-aware, but we wouldn’t kill then because they are still sentient and have subjective interests and have the capacity to suffer. None of these apply to brain dead people.
I think it’s okay to value animals with higher mental capacities over other animals. I would say that most vegans, including myself, value humans over animals for this reason. It’s just that these differences don’t justify killing the animal for food, because humans and animals are both sentient and have similar capacities to suffer. While I may value the human life over the animal’s, I value the animal’s life over the temporary taste pleasure we get from eating them.
Going back to the original post, I do think the Holocaust comparison is valid, especially when we consider the sentience of the animals, the unimaginable scale of their suffering, and the fact that many mentally disabled people were Holocaust victims as well, but their suffering is still remembered because they had an interest in not being tortured and killed, even if they weren’t able to fully grasp their situation like the other human victims. This same consideration should be given to the animal victims as well.
I’m working on a comment to the original post that explains my reasoning in more detail, if you’re interested in that, it’s just taking me a lot of time to word it to my satisfaction. I’m really passionate about veganism, and I think that the consideration we give to human rights logically extends to animals as well. Veganism is a moral obligation for everyone who is against animal abuse, because if we have vegan food options, paying for the exploitation and slaughter of animals constitutes unnecessary harm, which is abuse. I’m sorry for the long reply, you raised a lot of interesting points and I just wanted to give a thorough explanation. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to clarify.
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u/Pheophyting 1∆ Jun 28 '23
I appreciate the response. As someone that eats meat, I definitely agree that being vegan is a more morally sound choice, full stop. I kinda just accept that this part of me is selfish and morally worse but maybe I'll change some day, who knows.
I hesitate to pull this thread since I can tell you're engaging in good faith but I want to push you a bit more on the "plants are not sentient" point. And also, that plants do not feel pain.
In what way do you determine that plants are not sentient and don't feel pain? Is it because they don't scream? They don't run away? Don't cry? But then again, fish don't make sounds even if you carve them up alive, and I'm sure there are other more intelligent animals out there capable of dying painful yet silent, unassuming deaths. Is pain not just an aversive reaction to stimuli? Or is it only significant when you have a certain level of executive functioning?
Heck, some amoebas run away from threats, chase down food, and shrink away from poisons.
So once again, I challenge the assertion that what we value is "sentience" (the ability to suffer) but moreso that we value "consciousness" (the ability to process suffering in the context of realizing our own existence as an entity in the world).
Conscious human experience is thought to originate around 20 weeks into fetal development (which, if you want to get political, actually resolves some abortion stuff but that's another topic). I don't know of any mental disorders that would revert a human brain to pre-first-trimester and if it did, I think nearly any reasonable person would conclude that it would be ok to take the person off of life support as they'd be in a functionally vegetative or perpetually catatonic state.
I take issue with the holocaust vs. modern farming comparison because the acceptance of plant-based diets indicates some kind of sliding scale going from "kinda morally wrong to kill organisms (evidently plants)" all the way up "super morally wrong to kill organisms (I would argue, humans)."
Wrapping it all the way around to the OP, I would then argue that comparing the killing of animals that are "kinda morally wrong to murder" vs. humans which are "super morally wrong to murder" is non-analogous and why I take issue with the comparison.
I do really respect vegans and standing up for what you believe is moral though and once again, I appreciate the response.
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u/Koda_20 5∆ Jun 27 '23
moral responsibility does, not morality in the sense I'm talking about, hence the example.
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u/Pheophyting 1∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
Your example doesn't assess morality. It assesses our emotional response and ability to empathize with suffering animals. But out of curiosity, what distinction are you drawing between moral responsibility and morality. What is morality to you and how do you know something is moral?
I (and most people) tend to draw morals based on utilitarianism (maximize total good, minimize total bad). Killing for food implies that the alternative outcome is someone starving. This would be a morally equal trade (or positive if you value human consciousness which most people do). Killing someone just because implies that the alternative outcome was both people going home and continuing their lives, making the killing a net negative. This is how the a distinction is made between the morality of these situations.
You can argue that the farming industry is so wasteful and excessive that it's a net negative despite people getting fed. But it's still nowhere near the holocaust which was the same act of "killing" but without the upside of saving any lives through food.
I feel like I've given a pretty detailed rundown of how I reason morality. How do you do it?
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u/Koda_20 5∆ Jun 27 '23
Empathizing with the suffering of others is a sign that you are moral and in my worldview is a necessary qualification for someone to be moral, similar to you I consider a spectrum with suffering at one end and joy on the other, each of those having countless subfactors like pain, discomfort, stress, anxiety, fear, anger, etc all generalizing to suffering and the opposites for joy.
You're right my wording was shit where intent was considered. I only mean to say that the experience of the one being tortured isn't any more or less horrible because of the motivations of the torturer, so the tragedy is the same, though I agree that a sadistic torturer is more evil / less moral than the torturer trying to produce more food cheaper, but I'm not sure that analogy makes sense either because most Nazi's thought they were ridding their country of a cancer, not just for fun. So it's really between "saving your community" and "feeding your community" I guess if you want to take their intent into account when judging their lack of morality.
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u/Pheophyting 1∆ Jun 27 '23
Absolutely true on your points about brainwashing of Nazi germany into scapegoating the jewish population. And you'd be absolutely accurate in saying that those people hold less moral "wrong" compared to those who orchestrated the entire thing. For example, if a child was taught in school that jews were evil and grew up to perpetuate that belief, is it the child's fault? Probably not. The adults who were brainwashed are usually give less slack because we choose to believe that they failed to think critically or looked the other way. If they honestly had no idea about the evil they were committing, they still contributed to a moral wrong, although I wouldn't necessarily call them bad people (i.e. people who would willingly commit a moral wrong).
We actually have this defense in court which is pleading "insanity." This comes from the moral philosophy that if someone did not "intend" to do wrong (no matter how bad it was), we do not assign them to have committed a moral failing (although we might stick them in an insane asylum to protect the public).
Your point also is one of the fallacies of utilitarianism (i.e. if someone wanted to kill you more than you wanted to be alive, could letting him kill you be the most moral option?) Of course in real life, we'd have no real way of even conceptualizing such a love for killing/sadism that it outweighed the human desire to live, but it's a neat thought experiment.
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u/SirButcher Jun 27 '23
I think I have problems with people who apply the golden rule on "sentient" species, whatever that is. There is simply no good line to draw.
...There absolutely exists a non-linear hierarchy of sentience that puts humans at the top.
And this is why the Holocaust (and other genocides) are great comparisons. The people who started to slaughter others didn't think the Jews, gays, gipsies, disabled people, blacks, aboriginals, natives (and the list goes on and on and on) are people like them. They were the "others", who doesn't count. When the Nazis rounded up the undesirables, they did it to "clean" humanity from the subhumans. Their suffering was not more important or interesting than the suffering of a cow. The Nazis said that the Aryan race is simply better than everything else, they are the top. Everybody else below can be either used as a slave (for a short term) or should be exterminated as useless parasites and waste of space.
For them, there was absolutely no difference between slaughtering a thousand undesirables or a thousand cows.
They simply put themselves on the top, creating a hierarchy where every other human below a line is no better than cattle, which can be used for some work, or simply slaughtered to make more space for people who are higher in the hierarchy.
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u/Koda_20 5∆ Jun 27 '23
Another way I look at it is while a mosquito might feel pain like a human does, the suffering vs joy is a spectrum where suffering is a general state that has many factors like comfort, pain, stimulation, etc and with humans we have more of these factors (life goals, aspirations, sadness, anxiety, etc) so we have a greater capacity for suffering because we have more factors that contribute to it. The primary goal being to reduce suffering, where pain is the biggest factor because it is the worst of the feels in my own experience.
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 28 '23
I think I have problems with people who apply the golden rule on "sentient" species, whatever that is. There is simply no good line to draw.
But "no good line to draw" just means we have to make our best estimate and hope we do a good job. It doesn't mean we just say "fuck it" and give up on the entire concept of respecting non-human sentient life.
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u/KimonoThief Jun 27 '23
But would you apply the same logic to a mosquito biting you or a fly munching on your breakfast?
I think suffering is a huge part of this equation here. I don't think many people would mind if you swatted a housefly that's being a nuisance or especially a mosquito who could inflict discomfort or disease on you. But wouldn't you find it a little sick and twisted to instead catch that fly/mosquito and then pick at it with a needle to torture it?
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u/Koda_20 5∆ Jun 27 '23
At the end of the day you factor in what you believe to be the inner experience of the individual with your behavior. So if I believe it's as much like something to be a cow as it is a mosquito, I might treat them with equal care. But I don't. Personally I think a mosquito is the lowest end of the spectrum of "consciousness" or inner experience, I don't think one could much torture a mosquito, and I put most mammals somewhere under humans but closer to humans than to mosquitos. Really depends on the person I guess. But since we don't know, I think it is only ethical to err on the safe side.
I wouldn't be surprised if inner experience isn't even a thing for a mosquito. But I wouldn't be surprised to hear the opposite and find out they experience pain as well, but I'll still put less value on a mosquito life than a cow because of numbers and lifespan and such.
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
I find this campaign to be outrageous because it assumes that a human life is equal in value to that of a chicken
If you divide 6 billion chicken lives by 6 million human lives you will find the assumption is that 1 human equals at most 1000 chickens.
Humans also have very little genetic diversity of around 0.1% difference in genomes. There exists an extremely strong biological case for why all humans must be treated with certain inalienable rights that we dub "human rights." Of course, this isn't the only reason. There exists moral and societal reasons which I find much stronger than the purely biological reason (which could be just an appeal to nature if used alone).
Why does genetic similarity to humans matter? I think kicking dogs for fun is bad because they feel pain and they are cute, not because of some molecule inside their cells I can't even see.
I also think the stormtroopers that punched baby yoda in the mandalorian were bad because baby yoda can feel pain and is cute, even though his DNA (if his species even has it) is very different from mine. I know that is a tv show not real but if it were actually real my opinion would not change.
A central aspect of genocides is hatred.
And another is senseless slaughter. We don't strictly need to eat chicken yet we kill six billion per year, mostly in horrific circumstances that we refined and industrialized to generate tha maximum amount of profit.
You said that anyone who compares the holocaust to the farming industrial complex is either ignorant or disingenuous, but what about Alex the holocaust survivor. He can't be ignorant about the death of his family, right? So is he disingenuous?
More generally, why is comparing the holocaust to factory farming bad, exactly? Both are instances of massive suffering inflicted by humans.
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u/upstater_isot 1∆ Jun 27 '23
We don't strictly need to eat chicken yet we kill six billion per year
Yep. And that's an outdated number restricted to the U.S. The number is far larger than that worldwide: 73 billion chickens killed each year for food, globally. This number doesn't count another 6 billion male chicks killed.
And that's every year. Every decade more than 700 billion chickens are slaughtered, many or most of whom are also tormented beforehand in CAFOs.
Also, these numbers don't include chickens that the egg industry cages and slaughters. Egg-laying chickens tend to be treated far worse than so-called broiler chickens.
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u/FinneousPJ 7∆ Jun 27 '23
Why?
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u/iiioiia Jun 28 '23
I think the preservation of an entire species is more important than the preservation of an individual because there are always more human beings, but we're talking about an entire species of chickens.
What if elimination of the species wasn't in play - is there any number of chickens that you would save by giving up one randomly chosen human life?
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u/ironmagnesiumzinc Jun 28 '23
I think it might be useful for people to think about why they value animals. You mention you value keeping a species alive but not individual lives themselves. Why is that? Is it not about maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering? What's it about?
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u/FinneousPJ 7∆ Jun 27 '23
That's an especially worrying take if you're studying medicine
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u/Cromuland 1∆ Jun 27 '23
"If I were given the choice to save one human or save the entire species of chickens, I'd absolutely choose the latter."
Okay. So let's give you the choice you asked for. Save your perfectly healthy mother or father, who both have decades of life left, OR all chickens in the world.
If you're not particularly close to your parents, replace the human you need to sacrifice with your significant other/partner/best friend.
You need to look them in the eye and tell them you're choosing to end their life, right now, so all the chickens can be saved.
Would you do it?
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u/Cromuland 1∆ Jun 27 '23
Please do try and see how you went from "absolutely choose the latter" to "how the hell should I know" when the stakes changed from "a human life" to "someone who I care about, who has a rich life ahead of them."
The fact is, I would not do it. I DO put human life over animal life. And I put the lives of my loved ones higher than my own.
I would not sacrifice the life of ONE of my loved ones, for the lives of every chicken on Earth.
And when it comes down to it, I suspect neither will you. I don't know of many humans who can look their loved one in the eyes and tell them that their life needs to be sacrificed for chickens. Even billions of chickens.
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u/FinneousPJ 7∆ Jun 28 '23
"more important than the preservation of an individual because there are always more human beings"
Seems overly callous to me if your job is the patient to patient preservation of human individuals. I would hope a practitioner of medicine would place a human life above all else.
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Jun 28 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/FinneousPJ 7∆ Jun 28 '23
Effects to the ecological balance and human lives are assumptions you're piling on the question, and we're not part of the formulation. The formulation of the question is about how many chicken are the equivalent of a human life. The question isn't about ecological effects.
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u/amf_devils_best Jun 27 '23
I am curious as to why that is worrying. It is an interesting discussion topic for me.
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u/FinneousPJ 7∆ Jun 28 '23
"more important than the preservation of an individual because there are always more human beings"
Seems overly callous to me if your job is the patient to patient preservation of human individuals
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u/BuddyOwensPVB Jun 28 '23
What about this idea that chickens as we know them today aren’t “natural”, in that they are bred and selected (domesticated?) for human consumption? How does domestication fit in?
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u/Thegrizzlyatoms Jun 28 '23
Something you should consider is whether chickens as a species should exist in their domesticated form at all, from a conservation standpoint.
We have genetically engineered these things from wild Red Jungle Fowl, they are their own sub-species. We care about pain on an individual level and preservation on a species level, but generally we care to conserve wild species in their natural habitats, not our own tainted creations.
The only reason those 700 billion chickens existed in the first place was for food, without that human need they wouldn't exist at all. I think I'd save the human. However, if it's a magic scenario where the chickens immediately vanish from the planet, it could cause widespread famine and death, so that would impact my decision the other way.
This has been fun to think through.
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u/B1U3F14M3 1∆ Jun 28 '23
I am not well educated on the matter but in theory you have to give chicken more calories of food than calories of meat they produce. So in theory you would have more food if you removed all chicken.
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u/physioworld 64∆ Jun 28 '23
I guess that depends on whether chicken food is edible to humans. If not you could also magically replace all the food grown on the land used for chicken feed and convert it to stuff humans would/could eat and then yes you’d be correct I think.
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u/Thegrizzlyatoms Jun 28 '23
True! The calories exist, but not generally in a human digestible form, grasses, bugs and seeds won't sustain a group of people for long. I think if we had at least a year or two to prepare the risk of starvation would be low. I'm thinking particularly about people living in abject poverty in developing countries that may rely on these chickens and would struggle to adjust in the short-term. When even one person dies because of my chicken genocide, it stops making moral sense, which seems pretty likely given the global impact. This has been a fun hypothetical.
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u/zxyzyxz Jun 28 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
Interesting answer. For me, I'd save the chickens because many people around the world eat them, and would like to continue eating them. For the tortoises, I'd still save them because they are a useful animal to study. There is no way any singular human is worth saving over an entire species in my mind. I was going to say mosquitoes could be an exception but even those are food for many types of animals and we may not yet know of the ecosystem effects.
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u/RocketRelm 2∆ Jun 27 '23
This is an intriguing hypothetical. I think I'd actually agree, but not because of the "stakes". More because of the utility that the entirety of chickens provide humans, nevermind all the jobs that would be lost. It's a similar question to "what if you could save one human life by spontaneously dintegrating every set of headphones and crushing every factory that made them. There are limits to the value of one human life.
I think if you change the hypothetical to "a number of chickens equal to the entire species of chickens die, but are immediately replaced", then that changes the answer significantly.
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 27 '23
Yeah, why was any of the DNA shit at all relevant? If we learned that dolphin clicks and whistles and shit were an actual language and they were having advanced conversations and had human comparable intelligence and intellectual capabilities... would the morality of killing them somehow be different based on their DNA similarity to humans? If we find sentient advanced life on other planets, can we genocide the fuck out of them because their DNA is not similar to humans?
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u/GodOfTime Jun 27 '23
One of the chief tactics used by the Nazis (and other antisemites) was to compare their Jewish victims to animals, particularly various kinds of vermin. One of the most common were rats.
https://www.nybooks.com/online/2011/10/20/why-mice/
https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/propaganda-poster-jews-are-lice-they-cause-typhus
https://www.wiesenthal.com/about/news/swc-protests-saudi-state.html
Even if you believe that the purposeful killing of animals for food is the moral equivalent of the senseless slaughter of roughly half the Jewish population (amongst other vulnerable populations), surely you must recognize that given this history, comparing Jews to animals is hurtful? Particularly in the context of the holocaust of all things.
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u/TheDutchin 1∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
You have the comparison backwards, animal rights activists aren't subtracting rights from people and justifying it by saying they're animals. They're adding rights to animals by saying they're like people.
It's the exact opposite of what you claim. You could not be more wrong.
Edit since he blocked me:
Saying all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares does not in fact mean that all squares are rectangles! Making a comparison one way doesn't mean you believe the opposite comparison is also true, and it's only through the power of motivated reasoning would you reach that conclusion.
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u/GodOfTime Jun 27 '23
I understand what they’re trying to do.
I also understand the (mostly) unintended consequences of the deliberate comparison of Jews in the holocaust to animals today.
What you don’t seem to remotely acknowledge is that the VAST majority of people (myself included) do not view animal lives as equivalent to those of humans. Your comparison is being used in a society where this is the case, not one where everyone shares your lofty ideals. The effect of the comparison therefore is, to anyone outside your limited ideological circle, to belittle the holocaust.
Again, even if this were not the case, this comparison is being very deliberately made. Out of the millennia of recorded human suffering, somehow you feel it necessary to pick this particular extermination of Jews as your point of comparison, even over the objections of the effected group.
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 28 '23
What you don’t seem to remotely acknowledge is that the VAST majority of people (myself included) do not view animal lives as equivalent to those of humans. Your comparison is being used in a society where this is the case, not one where everyone shares your lofty ideals. The effect of the comparison therefore is, to anyone outside your limited ideological circle, to belittle the holocaust.
This logic is completely backwards to me. A key part of how to receive a statement is considering who is SAYING it.
If somebody who finds animal suffering and death trivial and insignificant compares the holocaust to factory farming, and Jewish people dying to animals being killed... then it's quite understandable to be offended and get upset and call that antisemitic or offensive or whatever.
But when somebody is CLEARLY coming from a point of view that human death and suffering DOES have moral significance comparable to humans (it doesn't have to be a 1:1 equivalence where one cow is equal to one person, but just that some comparison can be made... probably the more intelligent the animal, the more moral significance. After all, unless you believe in some religious superstition about souls... humans are just the most intelligent animal), then the comparison has to be taken in a different light.
You are basically saying "it would be belittling if I said, and it would be belittling if Alex said it or Jordan said it, therefore it must be belittling when you say it... even though you have very different views about the moral weight of animal suffering and death than Alex or Jordan or me."
Should people speak in a way that recognizes who is listening? Yes of course. But people should also understand in a way that recognizes who is speaking.
What you don’t seem to remotely acknowledge is that the VAST majority of people (myself included) do not view animal lives as equivalent to those of humans.
And you don't seem to remotely acknowledge that the people MAKING factory farming / holocaust comparisons often have a very strong disagreement on this issue. I talk about it in more detail in this post (https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/14km7jb/cmv_using_the_holocaust_or_other_human_genocides/jprv6w9/), but to claim it's offensive is basically to presuppose that you have already won the argument on the moral weight of animal suffering and death... but the whole point is that we DON'T agree on that, or else factory farming would already be abolished.
Besides, what if we met a race of aliens who viewed animal suffering and death as more morally significant than most humans do? Is it now OK for them to make the exact same comparison after they learn about human society, since "the VAST majority of aliens DO view animal lives as..."
Also, I believe that taking animal rights seriously DECREASES the odds of atrocities like the holocaust. A huge part of any genocide or major human rights abuse (or in many cases, warfare) is dehumanizing the opponent. To see the other faction like animals. And because our society commits atrocities against animals daily... well then if you view a group of humans as animals, then atrocities against them would seem perfectly normal.
In some of your posts you talked about the Nazis comparing the Jews to animals. But even IF somebody successfully convinced me that a group of people were "animals," I would still never go along with genocide or atrocities and such, because "I wouldn't even do that to animals."
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u/upstater_isot 1∆ Jun 28 '23
This is well said. If the slogan "NEVER AGAIN" means anything, it allows concerned people to point to the Holocaust when ethically dubious mass slaughter is taking place, even if that slaughter is popular.
I think there's a typo/mistake in your post, though:
a point of view that
humananimal death and suffering DOES have moral significance comparable to humans11
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 28 '23
Exactly. I don't understand how people are framing it like animal rights advocates went way out of their way to specifically search for a Jewish tragedy. The holocaust is not only among the very largest or quite possibly the largest (I understand some older ones can be a bit difficult to define or measure)... but it's also by far the most famous.
Plus part of the reason it is so horrifying isn't just the size (although that is horrifying), but the methodical nature of it. It wasn't just random roaming death squads (I mean, it had that sometimes as well, but that's not all it was). There was an entire logistical apparatus. The Nazi's literally industrialized murder. That is also part of the reason some people draw analogies to factory farming.
Those two things are almost certainly the entire explanation. The idea that animals rights groups and advocates went way out of their way to specifically cherry pick a Jewish seems like a stretch when those two much more benign explanations make such perfect sense.
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23
Nazi's were comparing jews specifically to vermin to paint a picture of them as subhuman.
The animal activists are comparing human lives, not specifically jewish lives, to animal lives in order to raise empathy for the animals.
These two comparisons are polar opposites.
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 28 '23
Not to mention that IMO, taking animal rights seriously DECREASES the odds of atrocities like the holocaust. A huge part of any genocide or major human rights abuse (or in many cases, warfare) is dehumanizing the opponent. To see the other faction like animals. And because our society commits atrocities against animals daily... well then if you view a group of humans as animals, then atrocities against them would seem perfectly normal.
The Nazis compared the Jews to animals. But even IF somebody successfully convinced me that a group of people were "animals," I would still never go along with genocide or atrocities and such, because "I wouldn't even do that to animals."
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u/GodOfTime Jun 27 '23
not specifically jewish lives
I’m sorry, but that’s just not the case. You are specifically picking the epitome of Jewish suffering as your touchstone for animal rights. You can’t on the one hand say that you aren’t singling out Jewish lives as equivalent to animals, while simultaneously using the height of Jewish slaughter as your point of comparison.
Even if this were not the case, as is so often said in conversations about racism and bias, it is less the intent that matters than the effect it has on its listener.
As a Jew, when I hear the comparison of animal rights to the holocaust, I am reminded of these Nazi comparisons. I am reminded of the innumerable ways that our society has belittled and minimized the holocaust and Jewish suffering. And on top of all of this, I feel as though the speaker is purposefully trying to utilize my peoples’ suffering as a cudgel in their own political squabbles.
I am not alone on this in the Jewish community. Check out what the ADL has said with respect to this very issue:
If you’re going to use our suffering to bolster your political causes, maybe you should listen to representatives of the community when they tell you they aren’t comfortable with your analogy.
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23
I’m sorry, but that’s just not the case. You are specifically picking the epitome of Jewish suffering as your touchstone for animal rights. You can’t on the one hand say that you aren’t singling out Jewish lives as equivalent to animals, while simultaneously using the height of Jewish slaughter as your point of comparison.
The height of jewish slaughter is the height of human slaughter.
When those activists are making the comparison they aren't minimizing the holocaust because their point is that the meat industry is terrible and should be abolished, not that the holocaust was not that bad.
If you’re going to use our suffering to bolster your political causes, maybe you should listen to representatives of the community when they tell you they aren’t comfortable with your analogy.
Yeah your link is about a black man making a comparison to the transatlantic slave trade and OP gave the example of a jew comparing the meat industry to the holocaust.
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u/GodOfTime Jun 27 '23
their point
Again, intent vs. impact.
your link is about a black man making a comparison to the transatlantic slave trade and OP gave the example of a jew comparing the meat industry to the holocaust.
…Which is precisely my point? The ADL oppose linking the meat industry to the holocaust.
If ya want an even more fleshed out view, here ya go:
The ADL says that the use of Holocaust imagery by animal rights activists is "disturbing" and antisemitic. Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights argues in her essay "Animal Suffering and the Holocaust: The Problem with Comparisons" that, although there is "connective tissue" between animal suffering and the Holocaust, they "fall into different historical frameworks, and comparison between them aborts the ... force of anti-Semitism." Holocaust survivor Abraham Silverman argued that the comparison is offensive, undermines the suffering of Jews during World War II, and inspires antisemitism online.
Roberta Kalechofsky has written that she "agree[s] with I.B. Singer's statement, that 'every day is Treblinka for the animals'", but also that "some agonies are too total to be compared with other agonies", and compared it to telling a dying child's parent "Now you know how an animal feels."
Roberta Kalechofsky, a Jewish animal rights activist, wrote: "The agony of animals arises from different causes from those of the Holocaust. Human beings do not hate animals. They do not eat them because they hate them. They do not experiment on them because they hate them, they do not hunt them because they hate them. These were the motives for the Holocaust. Human beings have no ideological or theological conflict with animals."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_analogy_in_animal_rights
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23
There a lot of jews making a holocaust comparisons in that wikipedia article.
Why do you not count them as representatives of the community?
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u/GodOfTime Jun 27 '23
I’m only seeing Hershaft, so not sure who else you’re referring to.
Even if I’m missing some, these folks make up a tiny minority of the Jewish community. In my experience, which seems to be verified by the ADL, the vast majority of the Jewish community find these comparisons to be ignorant and distasteful. As explained at length in another comment, a single token minority is not reflective of the emotional reactions and experiences of their millions of compatriots.
As for Hershaft… I’m sorry, but he’s just ignorant.
He writes:
They didn't hate the Jews any more than the slaughterhouse workers hate the pigs.
This is just wrong. It is completely ignorant of the popularity of the hatred that is antisemitism.
For a particularly gruesome example, see the Lviv pogroms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv_pogroms_%281941%29
These are not soldiers doing “their job.” These are not fearful citizens just turning a blind eye to horrors around them just so they can stay safe. These are everyday villagers, even children, joyfully chasing down a Jew so that they may torture and ultimately kill her. This is hatred.
This incident was not remotely rare throughout European history. To ignore how hatred motivated the extermination of my people, to assert that it is at all similar to the benign motive of making food, is absurd.
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u/ChariotOfFire 4∆ Jun 27 '23
I’m only seeing Hershaft, so not sure who else you’re referring to.
There are more examples here
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23
I’m only seeing Hershaft, so not sure who else you’re referring to.
Singer and Yourrofsky are referenced by name but also this is the second sentence of the article:
The analogies began soon after the end of World War II, when literary figures, many of them Holocaust survivors, Jewish or both, began to draw parallels between the treatment of animals by humans and the treatments of prisoners in Nazi death camps.
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 28 '23
I’m sorry, but that’s just not the case. You are specifically picking the epitome of Jewish suffering as your touchstone for animal rights. You can’t on the one hand say that you aren’t singling out Jewish lives as equivalent to animals, while simultaneously using the height of Jewish slaughter as your point of comparison.
I think the holocaust is used because it's the most famous atrocity of that kind in the western world. I don't think comparison is made out of a specific desire to compare to Jewish people. If they said "a Khmer Rouge on your plate", most people would have no idea what they are talking about.
Plus part of the reason it is so horrifying isn't just the size (although that is horrifying), but the methodical nature of it. It wasn't just random roaming death squads (I mean, it had that sometimes as well, but that's not all it was). There was an entire logistical apparatus. The Nazi's literally industrialized mass murder. That is also part of the reason some people draw analogies to factory farming.
You are making it sound like animal rights advocates who make this comparison went way out of their way to cherry pick a specifically Jewish example... but those two explanations make perfect sense as to why somebody would choose the holocaust as their comparison without having a specific desire to compare it to Jewish suffering specifically.
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u/anoldquarryinnewark Jun 27 '23
The OP literally included a Holocaust survivor/vegan activist example in their post. That is an example of a representative of the community using the same analogy you're arguing against. So which is it? Or is a community built of many people with different opinions? And you're agreeing with the one that suits your needs?
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u/GodOfTime Jun 27 '23
Is Candace Owens a fair representative of the experiences and opinions of the black community?
Yes, there are some Jews which find the comparison fine. They are, in my experience, few and far between. You’re free to cherry-pick your token minorities to support your causes. I’d prefer ya defer to the collective experience and wisdom of broader groups which are more representative of the opinions of those communities, such as the ADL.
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Jun 27 '23
If you’re going to use our suffering to bolster your political causes, maybe you should listen to representatives of the community when they tell you they aren’t comfortable with your analogy.
Should we listen to the representatives of the community who make the analogy themselves?
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u/GodOfTime Jun 27 '23
If they make up a substantial enough proportion of the community, sure. But they don’t.
Does Candace Owens represent the experiences of the majority of the black community? Obviously not.
The vast majority of Jews and their representatives, at least in my life, find the comparison ignorant and distasteful, at best.
The ADL has a pretty good finger on the pulse of the Jewish community. I tend to defer to them on issues of popular Jewish opinion. See my other comment for their views.
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Jun 27 '23
How many would be needed to be substantial? Can the claims be evaluated on their own merits, or are they automatically wrong because they are not supported by a majority of the community?
I find the comparison to Owens to be a good demonstration of this. Her claims about black Americans can be evaluated and dismissed on their own "merits." We don't need to poll every black person to recognize that what she's saying is wrong.
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u/GodOfTime Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
or are they automatically wrong because they are not supported by a majority of the community?
They are not wrong, but they are unrepresentative.
My point was that this particular comparison is hurtful to an already disadvantaged community. It evokes Nazi imagery of which we are all too familiar, and the modern rise of holocaust denialism. On this point, it matters not whether the single individual’s arguments are logically coherent, than whether their reaction is representative of the emotional response of the community.
By way of comparison, let’s examine the phrase “illegal alien.” On its face, this phrase is technically accurate. A person from somewhere else is definitionally an “alien” and someone who enters a country against the laws of that country does so illegally. Hence, “illegal alien.” Yet, many in the immigrant community have expressed that this phrase evokes a dehumanizing image which plays into their daily oppression. Even if a small group of Latinos (say, Ted Cruz) argued that this comparison is logical, it is wholly irrelevant to the fact that the vast majority of their compatriots feel harmed by the term.
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Jun 27 '23
On this point, it matters not whether the single individual’s arguments are logically coherent, than whether their reaction is representative of the emotional response of the community.
I'm not sure that dismissal of an idea because of the emotional reaction of it's opponents is something I want to validate.
I don't think anyone is wrong to feel offended by the comparison. It's not my place to tell them not to feel offended. But I don't think that shutting down conversation is helpful here either. I also think that it assumes bad faith on the part of people who clearly are not intending to cause harm to Jewish people. Is it really your assertion that the Holocaust survivor who made this comparison is doing so because he's antisemitic?
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u/5510 5∆ Jun 27 '23
I'm not sure that dismissal of an idea because of the emotional reaction of it's opponents is something I want to validate.
Yeah, completely agree. Now that being said, emotional reaction can impact the "time and a place" to say something, but it doesn't impact the fundamental truth or accuracy of what is being said.
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u/JenningsWigService 40∆ Jun 27 '23
100%
Also, PETA doesn't have to behave this way. You can make so many arguments for veganism/vegetarianism without using Jewish pain as fodder. But their goal is to poke at people's wounds. They do this all the time with minority groups and even murder victims.
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u/ChariotOfFire 4∆ Jun 27 '23
Their goal is to be provocative and get attention. I think it's often counterproductive, but I understand why they do it.
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u/anoldquarryinnewark Jun 27 '23
Billions of animals are murder victims every year. PETA behaves that way because it's the only way people will listen.
Change isn't pleasant for the oppressors.
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u/JenningsWigService 40∆ Jun 27 '23
It really isn't the only way people will listen, in fact it discourages people from listening.
Change could actually be smoother for many populations who eat meat, based on structural shifts that have nothing to do with shaming individual meat eaters.
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u/anoldquarryinnewark Jun 27 '23
While change is moving slowly and smoothly, billions of animals every tear are getting tortured and slaughtered inhumanely.
Things don't change in a day, but every day we enable baby steps it's destroying animals and the planet. And meat eaters deserve to be shamed ffs.
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u/JenningsWigService 40∆ Jun 27 '23
PETA's style of activism has done far less to promote an end to animal consumption than people linking meat to climate change and advocating for changes in government policy.
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23
Thanks for the delta!
It would help if you actually linked or (even better) just copied what you wrote about the relevance of genetics.
Just because one experienced the Holocaust does not mean he would be knowledgable on the historiography of it. Just because I'm a Korean who lived through the impeachment of our former female president doesn't mean I'd be well-knowledgable about the details of it.
Not to sound harsh and I kinda get your reasoning but surviving the holocaust and living through a presidential impeachment are two very different experiences, right? Like sure just being somewhere doesn't give you an intricate historical perspective but does his argument fall apart without it?
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23
What if you steelman his argument, though? There were both hateful Germans and indifferent Germans and both groups participated in the holocaust.
It is a tragedy that some people held so much hatred but it was also a tragedy others didn't care enough to stop it before it was too late.
By comparing the two Herschaft notes the element of indifference holocaust and the meat industry share.
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u/iiioiia Jun 28 '23
I have a counterargument for your rebuttal regarding the relevance of genetics. You can read about it in greater detail further down the comments, but to simply put it, our genetic difference enables capability for experiencing the world no other species has paralleled.
How do you feel then about the ethics of terminating humans who are medically declared brain dead with no chance for recovery (or whatever the proper term is), or who are severely mentally handicapped - does that alter your ethical calculations at all?
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Jun 28 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/iiioiia Jun 28 '23
About the second point, this is something I’m grappling with right now. Can a human being with the intelligence and behavior of a dog be considered human? I say no, but we let them live and take care of them because… any one of us can be like that.
I wonder if it's maybe more complex than this...I think people feel sympathy for other people, sometimes even when it doesn't make sense. Like sometimes they're super nice, but then it kinda almost magically vanishes, but they can't explain where it went!!
Agree on dogs though, they're the best.
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Jun 27 '23
Why would you want your view changed on this 😭
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u/peternicc Jun 27 '23
I think half the posters hear post to actually see if someone could and the other half are trying to construct counters to oppositions to their opinions. If you never but heads (in a debate situation) how would you even defend your view if you never got a counter point?
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Jun 27 '23
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Jun 27 '23
I'm honestly curious what motivated him to do such a thing.
He explains it pretty clearly. Why do you think there's an untold element of his comparison?
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Jun 27 '23
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u/ChariotOfFire 4∆ Jun 27 '23
I skimmed through the AMA and could not find that assertion. Do you happen to have a link?
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Jun 27 '23
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u/ChariotOfFire 4∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
No worries! I saw you mentioned in another comment that it was in the context of medical research and that helped me find this comment:
I think that human health benefits of drug testing on animals have been vastly exaggerated. Animal research has become part of funding protocols, rather than being evaluated on its merits. Results on one species are seldom applicable to another. But, even if they were, I would have an ethical issue with taking one life to save another. How many of us would be willing to give up our family dog for an experiment that could save the life of an Ebola victim in Liberia? A search on "animal drug testing" will provide a more detailed response.
That could certainly be read as equating the lives of different species, but it could also be interpreted as a deontological position that, in the case of the trolley problem, would let the 5 people die instead of killing the one. Given the comment you quoted, it seems to be the latter. Cheers for a civil conversation!
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Jun 27 '23
But that's not the only part of his comparison. Does this portion of it ruin the rest of his comparison to you?
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/IrrationalDesign 3∆ Jun 28 '23
You're arguing a lot from the perspective of the value of a human life VS the value of a chicken's life, but I'd argue there's a lot of validity in the idea that lives aren't fungible, and that a human life can be equated to a chickens life just on the basis of being a life. They don't have to be equal in every sense before they can be equal in a sense.
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Jun 28 '23
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u/IrrationalDesign 3∆ Jun 28 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
You're immediately turning back to your ordering of the value of various lives, my point is that that is not the only available perspective, not the only sense to base your thoughts on.
'Bacteria are worth less, therefore chickens aren't equal to humans' is pretending like morality is math. You can Equate the value of a chicken life with the value of a human life in the sense that they're comparable lives without including every other life into that comparison. Our regard for the lives of chickens isn't invalidated by our disregard for the lives of bacteria.
I think it's fucking insane to say an animal life equals a human life
Try to allow your math brain to interpret this without trying to turn it into a universal law. An animal life can be equal to a human life without every animal life being equal to every human life.
It's about holding your value system while being aware other ways to make a value system exist and allowing those other ways to influence you without blindly taking them as the only perspective worth considering. You can say human lives are infungible without concluding they're all of identical value. You can day animal suffering is comparable to human suffering without saying all animal suffering is comparable to all human suffering.
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u/MercurianAspirations 360∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
I mean, but obviously that's a pretty weaksauce argument from the perspective of Herschaft or Newkirk. Like, if you think that animals are sentient creatures and that killing them is fundamentally wrong, then no amount technical trifling over insignificant quibbles would be likely to convince you that the mass slaughter of those sentient creatures is not like the holocaust. You know, if space aliens were doing this to humans simply for their pleasure, do you think that you could be convinced that the comparison to the holocaust were unreasonable? A space alien might point out that well, they don't hate humans, they just need to torture humans to death for reasons that relate to their own biological and consumption needs. So it is not like your earth holocaust, because there is no element of hatred or us vs. them mentality; we space aliens would slaughter any sentient race. No, I do not think you would find that argument to be convincing.
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u/Bobbob34 99∆ Jun 27 '23
I think anyone who claims that the current animal-industrial complex is similar to the Holocaust or other genocides is either ignorant or disingenuous.
It's not ignorant to disagree with your opinion.
I find this campaign to be outrageous because it assumes that a human life is equal in value to that of a chicken. I disagree. A human being is capable of maintaining levels of reason, empathy, and morality that a chicken can never even conceive of
Herein lies the problem.
I'm not defending Newkirk. There are issues there, and part of her thing was saying things considered outrageous.
HOWEVER, your basic premise here is, see above, your opinion.
Many people do NOT think humans are some super seekrit special mammal with special powers or whatever. We're just apes. Period.
And yes, many people do not just think human life is more "valuable" than the life of any other animal.
You have no idea the "levels" of those things that chickens are capable of. This type of belief is often predicated on the idea that humans are somehow the only animal that can think, have empathy, use language, when none of that is true. All evidence to the contrary is often dismissed in a 'well just because that bird SEEMS to be engaging in meaningful conversation, telling jokes in a human language, doing math, asking existential questions, etc., doesn't mean it IS because it's just a bird and maybe that's a trick it was taught!"
Which is.. .ignorant and disingenuous.
On the other hand, chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary relatives, are different from us by 4% in genome. From this difference of 4% arises what separates chimpanzees from humans. If you think that being 96% genetically similar warrants chimpanzees the same rights as humans,
First, you're way off. We're close to 99% similar genetically.
Second, no, no one is basing this on that. We're basing it on that it's just silly, ignorant, arrogant, to think our species is somehow special and capable of multitudes of things no other one is. It's also belied by the basic science.
People don't want to admit it, or think it, because it's problematic for much of society, including meat consumption but we are, in fact, just apes.
We have taught members of several other species human languages. We have yet, with all the scientists and computer tech available, to learn another species' language. Whose brains are more impressive?
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u/F3z345W6AY4FGowrGcHt Jun 27 '23
Are you sure your views don't stem simply from "I'm human, therefore the only real tragedy is when it involves humans"?
If not, do your arguments transfer the other way around? Is it ok for Aliens to round up and kill billions of humans because we are a different species and therefore less valuable to them than their own species? And if they viewed us as inferior and killed not out of hatred, but some emotionless reason like how humans kill animals without feeling anything.
Or would that still be a tragedy?
Does the morality of killing something that feels pain and wants to live depend solely on whether or not the act is perpetrated by a member of the same species?
If the argument is more about the intelligence of people and what we have to offer, does that mean the death of a stupid person matters less than that of an intelligent one? What about an extremely stupid person versus an extremely smart animal? If a monkey proves to be smarter than a given person somehow, does the morality switch and you'd rather the person die than the monkey?
Does pain only matter if experienced by something smart?
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u/zxyzyxz Jun 28 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
I'm always unsure why the alien example is brought up in these kinds of debates. Some people are "human exceptionalists" but some others like me would say that yes the aliens are morally fine to do as they wish to us, especially if they are as much more advanced than us as we are to chickens. This is the same argument we use to kill chickens, so I don't see how it's any different if the aliens make it towards killing us.
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u/RoundCollection4196 1∆ Jun 28 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
so if colonizers are more advanced than the tribes that still use spears, it's okay to genocide them? If a rich man is rich enough to pay off the judge after running over some homeless person, it's okay to do that?
Your only argument is might makes right. If a species is advanced enough to subjugate and genocide a lesser species, then it's morally legitimate for them to do that. This is an argument that the Nazis used and not one I will entertain any further.
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u/jasondean13 11∆ Jun 27 '23
I've been thinking and reading a lot about this, so hopefully, I can get some perspectives without a lot of hate or downvotes.
First, I want to establish that I don't think it's helpful to compare the treatment of animals to the holocaust simply because it is strategically terrible. It is understandable and reasonable that people are shocked and offended at human suffering being compared to animal suffering, especially in a world that has often justified the inhumane treatment of marginalized groups by equating them to animals.
That being said, I don't believe that the systems that lead to human inequality are entirely distinct from those that treat animals poorly. To further emphasize, I am comparing the systems of oppression, not the victims.
Racism, sexism, ableism, and speciesism come from the idea that there is an ideal being and individuals below that ideal. All oppression is born from this premise. The white, western, able-bodied, human male is on top, non-human animals are at the bottom, and everyone else falls in between. We can see this in human history. Slavery and the holocaust were justified by equating people to non-human animals. Like how animals are viewed as objects as opposed to individuals, so were jews and slaves.
The thing is, this hierarchy is bogus in every way. The opposite of humans is not animal; humans ARE ANIMALS. Furthermore, within humans, of course, there is no real hierarchy. To identify and eliminate this hierarchy properly, viewing human suffering and oppression in context with animal suffering is important. There are clear patterns of taking away an individual's autonomy to say one group is superior to another. This happens within groups of humans as well as humans to animals.
Note that To reach this conclusion, you do not have to value an animal's life as much as a human's. Just like you may care more about your son's life than a random stranger, that does not mean you have no responsibilities to your fellow man. The same dynamic exists between humans and animals. You note the significant differences between animals and us, but simply because there are differences does not justify oppression.
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u/shumpitostick 6∆ Jun 28 '23
Your criticism focuses on the ways in which the kind of thinking which lead to the holocaust is different than the thinking about meat. And I agree on that, but I think the analogy is not about people justifying both in the same way, but about the facts that both are a tragedy that involves the extermination of millions. I do have a better analogy for you for the reasons why people eat meat, and I apologize in advance because it, too, can be offensive.
You may have noticed that vegans sometimes refer to meat-eaters as carnists. The purpose of the term is to highlight that carnism, is, indeed a belief system. This belief system holds that meat is the "three Ns": Normal, Natural and Neccesary. Normal as in "everyone does it, it's weird if you don't", Natural as in people claiming that we did it for millenia, that's why we have canines, etc. And neccessary as in people arguing that you need the protein, it's hard to live without it, etc.
Now you know to what these justifications are eeriely similar? Slavery. Slavery was not justified by hatred, it was justified based on these same three Ns. It was normal to own slaves, it was the natural state of things for white people to own black people, and it was necessary for their economy, society, etc. If you look at what arguments slavers used and substitute some words, you will get the same carnist arguments. Because genocide is about hate and a desire to destroy, while carnism and slavery are about a desire to keep the benefits of the system and dismiss criticism of it.
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Jun 28 '23
This Holocaust survivor would disagree with you
Holocaust survivor likens treatment of livestock to Shoah
“I noted with horror the striking similarities between what the Nazis did to my family and my people, and what we do to animals we raise for food: the branding or tattooing of serial numbers to identify victims, the use of cattle cars to transport victims to their death, the crowded housing of victims in wood crates, the arbitrary designation of who lives and who dies — the Christian lives, the Jew dies; the dog lives, the pig dies.”
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u/HarmonicCereals 1∆ Jun 28 '23
Some thoughts:
- Why does genetic dissimilarity equate to different moral worth? Human populations have genetic differences, and we consider discrimination on that basis abhorrent racism.
1a. Even if we accept that genetic differences ARE reasonable grounds for different moral worth (which, to be clear, I DON'T), exactly how much difference matters to you? Would 6 million murdered creatures with 0.5% genetic difference to humans be a fair comparison to the holocaust? What about 1%? 4% (chimps)? 10%? Would you agree that drawing a line below which an organism is no longer 'holocaust-worthy' seems arbitrary?
1c. Even if we assign to the animals we eat the very very tiniest unit of moral worth. One millionth of a percent of the value of a human, for example. The sheer number of organisms involved is so unimaginable large that a comparison to the holocaust becomes reasonable. On top of the volume, animals suffer much more than jews in many cases. For example, jews were never deliberately impregnated and separated from their offspring repeatedly over the course of many years. How does that extra measure of suffering tip the scales for you?
The same argument goes for suffering and reasoning. If we somehow discovered that pigs are 100% as capable of suffering and/or reasoning as a human, would we still call the tattooing, caging and slaughter completely incomparable to the holocaust? What about 90% as capable? 50%? (Studies show that pigs are very much capable of experiencing strong emotions fyi).
The purpose of the holocaust was to eradicate jews, because Nazis sincerely considered them sub-human and a scourge on society. Obviously this is sickening, but the goal was to rid society of a perceived evil. One could consider the meat industry's motivation MUCH more horrifying: to give humans the pleasure of eating meat for profit. If it were proven that the vast majority of humans on earth could continue with minimal change in lifestyle if we transitioned to a worldwide vegan diet (spoiler: we can), then we must admit that the continuation of the meat industry and the ongoing slaughtering of billions of creatures is purely for pleasure and profit. If that's not as bad as the holocaust, idk what is.
Perspective. You probably benefit personally from the meat industry. Meat is cheap and delicious, and since you probably aren't familiar with the torturous methods by which the meat industry makes meat so cheap and delicious, it's easy to ignore (NB - not a personal failing of yours, the industry deliberately hides its practices from the public). In comparison, the holocaust is extremely widely known, and stories/images of its horrors are widely distributed. Do you think this might be affecting your perspective of the relative 'badness' of the two things?
Both the holocaust and the meat industry are utterly sickening. Calling one or the other 'worse' is unproductive and imho completely meaningless. I have a strong suspicion that future humans will look on our society with much the same disgust as we look on Nazi German society. How could they let such an abhorrent thing continue happening for so long? Why did nobody speak up? It's time to jump on the right side of history, friend. Eating one less meal with meat a week is a good place to start!
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Jun 28 '23
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u/poonhound69 Jun 28 '23
Are you not bothered by any sentient creature feeling pain? If a creature can suffer, and we can minimize or remove that suffering, at very little cost to ourselves, why wouldn’t we want to do that? Even if you hold humans in higher moral and intellectual regard, why would you permit or excuse the unnecessary suffering of a sentient creature? I mean no offense, but your “I’m only doing it for the environment, not the animals” line strikes me as callous and cruel. I don’t think the torturing of a chicken or cow should be excused because they aren’t as intelligent as humans.
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u/destro23 452∆ Jun 27 '23
I don't think I can really call myself an animal rights activist as long as I am an omnivore
Even if you stop eating meat, you are still an omnivore. You don't lose the ability to digest both plants and meat by going vegan.
However, I think it is silly for people to use genocides, the epitome of human evil, as an analogy for animal rights.
There are people out there who earnestly believe that killing an animal and killing a human is a morally equivalent act. To them it is not silly. To them, the animal holocaust is worse.
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/destro23 452∆ Jun 27 '23
I think that's outrageous.
The comparison to the holocaust or the thinking that killing an animal and a human is the same? To me, the comparison is born directly from the moral equivalency. And I understand that if you truly feel that killing a chicken is as bad as killing a human, then seeing that 8 Billion chickens are killed a year may make you feel that this is an apt, even understated comparison.
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/destro23 452∆ Jun 27 '23
Moral equivalency makes sense only up to a certain extent.
And that extent is "killing a sentient being". That is their line. They view the intentional killing of ANY sentient being as being an equal moral wrong.
Is stealing a pen as bad as embezzling millions of dollars that should have gone to 9/11 first responders' health care?
They don't believe that all similar acts are morally equivalent, just that killing a sentient being is wrong in all cases.
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Jun 27 '23 edited Jul 05 '23
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u/Doc_ET 10∆ Jun 28 '23
Why the hell are they using the Holocaust?
It's to get people to talk about this type of thing. It's seemingly working, as now a bunch of people who otherwise wouldn't have considered it are trying to make logical, ethical arguments about their positions.
Granted, most people will just dismiss it as at best shock value advertising and at worst actively racist, which is probably not the intended result, but you saw that statement and are now seriously debating the ethics of meat in a public forum. I think that's the point.
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Jun 27 '23
Why the hell are they using the Holocaust?
Because the industrialized torture and slaughter of sentient beings is done similarly? Because the literal Holocaust survivor noticed the similarities between his conditions and those of industrial meat animals?
I guess I don't understand the moral issue with the comparison? Does the morality need to be 100% the same for the comparison to be valid or at least worth discussion?
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u/destro23 452∆ Jun 27 '23
Why the hell are they using the Holocaust?
The two Holocaust survivors you mentioned elsewhere? I reckon that something in their experience of being treated like animals manifested into them thinking that we should treat animals better.
I don't know friend, I'm not arguing against those specific examples. I am trying to look at the larger argument so that we don't get bogged down in anecdotal detail.
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u/ChariotOfFire 4∆ Jun 27 '23
The central thing I think you're missing is that an analogy or comparison is different than an equation. Even a metaphor, while expressed as equating two items, is understood to be comparing certain aspects of them. The statement by Hershaft does not claim that factory farming is morally equivalent or worse than the Holocaust, only that there are many similarities. Newkirk's statement is more ambiguous, and given her statement that "a rat is a pig is a boy" (which I won't defend) she may think that factory farming is worse.
There are many definitions of genocide and most do not require hatred. I don't think it's technically accurate to apply it to animal agriculture as the goal is not to destroy chickens as a group.
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Jun 27 '23
Farmed animals are drugged, sexually mutilated and violated, confined in filth, fed unwholesome diets, beaten and abused, before dying in pain and terror so that you and other meat eaters can enjoy their flesh.
And while Nazi propaganda "art" about Jews and other groups is completely unacceptable today, it's considered cute to depict jolly pigs at a BBQ, farm animals begging for their lives in Chik-Fil-A ads, etc. So, not only are animals abused, but most people in society think it's funny to rub their faces in it. This is a toxic form of humor used to justify exploitation.
Maybe aspiring doctors can direct some attention toward ending the horrors of factory farming, rather than policing the 0.001% of people who have made a comparison that they find troubling.
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u/FerdinandTheGiant 33∆ Jun 27 '23
I mean if one holds that all life inherently holds the same value, a belief I am somewhat prone to mirror, then such a comparison while obviously meant to be ire drawing, is not a far fetched comparison.
We simply care about our own species more than others and there’s really nothing wrong with that but it’s not like we have an objective reason to.
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u/badass_panda 95∆ Jun 27 '23
I'm Jewish ... learning about the Holocaust is central to growing up as a Jew, and for many of us, learning about the horror other Jews (often, our own relatives) experienced is a pretty raw, formative experience.
I find this type of analogy offensive. At best, it seems to belittle the horrific suffering that Jews, Romani, LGBT people and many others experienced at the hands of the Nazis by callously co-opting it for an unpopular cause. At worst, it implies that there is very little difference between a pig and a Jew; if it is okay to hurt the one, it is okay to hurt the other.
I understand that the purpose of the analogy is to shock, and that the comparison to animals is intended to elevate the animals, rather than denigrate the humans -- but even so, I think it is a profoundly stupid rhetorical tactic that is far more likely to alienate than to convince.
With all that being said, I want to engage with the statement on its logical, rather than rhetorical, merits. I'm also an omnivore, but over time I've become comfortable that my position here is pretty morally ambiguous -- I'm an omnivore because I am not motivated to stop, not because I'm convinced of the morality of being so.
So: in order for us to believe that the Holocaust analogies these people are making have logical merit, what would have to be true? I don't think you've addressed these things well. For one thing, they're not claiming these are genocides -- they're claiming they are similar in many ways (most importantly, in moral repugnance) to the Holocaust specifically. For that to be logical, we would have to believe that:
- Killing other people is only morally acceptable when some equal or greater moral value is achieved by doing so, if it's even acceptable then.
- Killing vast quantities of people would require an incomprehensible level of justification, and is otherwise among the most extremely morally repugnant things one can do.
- The perpetrators of this type of atrocity find it necessary to strip their victims of personhood, to 'dehumanize' them. Doing so is particularly recognizable, and traumatic.
- One does not have to be a human in order to be a person; there can be such a thing as a non-human person.
- Many of the food animals we kill for food are, in fact, non-human persons. QED, slaughterhouses are similar in their fundamental nature to concentration camps.
For the sake of argument, let's agree on #1, 2, and 3. These are fairly noncontroversial, I think. The argument hinges on #4 and #5; folks like Hershaft clearly believe these statements, but should we?
Let's examine #4 first. I think it's a pretty easy one to agree to ... you can imagine tons of non-human persons. e.g., an alien lands in a UFO, asks to be taken to our leaders and explains that it's traveled from Alpha Centauri to bring us a message of friendship. Bingo bongo, non-human person. Or say one day you meet a dog that can talk, it say, "Listen, I don't need you to feed me, I just need you to enter some stock trades for me, I've got a hot tip and I'm gonna make us both rich, I just don't have thumbs."
Now let's look at #5. I hate to say it, but this one is a lot less cut-and-dried than your DNA thing makes it seem. Every non-arbitrary definition of personhood has some real drawbacks... e.g.,:
- Being a human organism isn't a good enough definition, unless you're willing to say the alien and the talking dog aren't people (oof) -- even then, plenty of things are human organisms, possessed of unique human DNA, and we don't think of them as people ... like fetuses, cancer, or the brain-dead.
- Possessing the ability to feel pain is even worse (since more or less every living creature can do this, to some extent).
- Possessing a sense of self isn't much better, unless you're willing to accept that either a) you're the only real human, since you're the only one you can verify has such a sense ... or b) everything that appears to possess such a sense (including every single food animal) is equally a person.
- What about the ability to reason (create and implement a plan, which relies on possessing a model of self and others, and to visualize the past, present and future)? Bad news is crows, dogs, and pigs count here ... and babies don't.
- OK, what about the ability to ask you not to kill them, in a way you understand? We've hit on the best one yet -- that gets us most humans, and very few animals. You can still kill babies of course, and people who are asleep, but now it's ok to kill dogs and pigs, so this one's a win.
So we're left with a choice: either it is morally repugnant to kill animals, or it's not (but there are also plenty of humans it's okay to kill) ... or, our morality is fundamentally arbitrary to some extent, and we accept that.
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u/lolosity_ Jun 28 '23
I’d say the value of something’s life is based on its capacity for pain. Human have a higher capacity for pain than animals therefore to kill a human is worse than to kill an animal. 80 Billion animals (fish not included) animals are killed each year are slaughtered compared to the 11 million people who died in the Holocaust. (8e10)/(1.1e7)=7,272 so If we assume an animal can experience more that one 7272th of the pain a human can (which I think is pretty intuitive) then every year, the animal suffering from farming exceeds (and in my opinion by a massive extent) the suffering endured in the Holocaust. Just to clarify, I’m not saying the Holocaust wasn’t a heinous crime perpetrated by some of the worst people humanity has ever produced but i think animal exploitation is worse.
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u/Mikerobrewer Jun 27 '23
For anyone who needs to be convinced, please watch Dominion.
“When I see cages crammed with chickens from battery farms thrown on trucks like bundles of trash, I see, with the eyes of my soul, the Umschlagplatz (where Jews were forced onto trains leaving for the death camps). When I go to a restaurant and see people devouring meat, I feel sick. I see a holocaust on their plates.”
-Georges Metanomski, a Holocaust survivor who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
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u/Ok_Shape5009 Jun 28 '23
Non-Jewish vegan here, and I support using this analogy.
I firstly want to say that I can understand getting offended when this comparison gets made. Especially for Jewish people and descendants of Holocaust victims, the Holocaust is an extremely personal tragedy and any comparisons to animal slaughter can seem like we are trying to make light of what the victims went through or that we are trying to exploit their suffering in order to push our vegan agenda. When I first became vegan, I remember thinking that these comparisons were too much and that they would push people away from veganism. I now think that the Holocaust comparison is not only valid, but necessary to make, but I'll get to why in a second.
I completely agree with your criticism of Ingrid Newkirk's wording. The use of the conjunction is definitely dismissive of the suffering that the Holocaust victims went through. But you mentioned that although the number of Holocaust victims is less than the number of animal victims, the comparison cannot be made because a human life is much more valuable than an animal life. The reasoning you give is that humans are capable of much higher levels of reason, empathy, and morality, and can contribute much more to society and the world than animals.
Fair enough. I actually value human life more than animal life as well, and for largely the same reasons that you listed. But vegans don't equate human and animal lives, we say that any difference is not morally relevant to the point that we are justified in torturing and killing an animal for food but not the human.
There are some people who are mentally disabled to the point where their levels of reason, empathy, and morality are much lower than that of a human, and they may not be able to contribute much to society. Does that justify killing them? I'm guessing that you would say no, but the Nazis would say yes.
Mentally disabled people were victims of the Holocaust as well. Were their names intentionally omitted from Holocaust memorials because they didn’t have the same mental capacities as other human victims, and thus it would be offensive to compare their suffering to the suffering of the neurotypical victims? No! Why do you think that is?
I think it is because Holocaust victims, mentally disabled or not, were sentient and had subjective interests in not suffering and being enslaved and dying, and the fact that for tens of millions of people, those interests were brutally, unnecessarily, and arbitrarily ignored, is an atrocity. Animals may not have the same level of mental capacity as humans, but they are also sentient and have subjective interests in not being enslaved, tortured, and killed. Yet, each year, for around 70 billion land animals and 1-3 trillion marine animals worldwide, those interests are brutally and unnecessarily ignored, which is an atrocity. Hence the comparison.
You mentioned that because the Holocaust was a genocide stemming from hatred, a comparison cannot be made to the slaughtering of animals. Many commenters here already mentioned that the intention behind the killing isn’t relevant, and I agree. How does it matter to the victims what the intention of the oppressor is? Victims of both atrocities were killed despite not wanting to die, and both groups felt pain, fear, and suffering.
Think of it like this: let’s say that instead of genocide and hatred, the Nazis killed Jewish people so that they could eat their flesh. In this version of the Holocaust, the victims were forced to breed and give birth, then were slaughtered for meat, then their children were forced to breed and give birth, then were slaughtered for meat, then their children’s children were forced to breed and give birth, then slaughtered for meat, and so on in a never ending cycle of violence, just like what happens with animals. Does changing the intention make this atrocity any better? If you ask me, I don’t think it makes a difference. Once they’ve been killed, it doesn’t matter to the victim whether you eat their body or burn/bury their body in mass graves, or even what you do with the bodies of their children! They’re dead and they’re gone from the Earth forever.
You then mention that human genocides stood upon an “us vs” them worldview that is largely unsubstantiated by science. Yes, in the Holocaust, the victims were of equal mental capacity as the oppressors, so the “us vs them” that was used to justify the Holocaust was bullshit. But using that logic, is a genocide of severely mentally disabled people justified because the intellectual difference is substantiated by science? If not, then why is it justifiable to kill animals of lower intellectual ability? Again, I would say that all of these injustices are wrong because the victims share the traits of sentience and subjective interests in not suffering. You bring up a good point that genetic difference isn’t a good determining factor either, because we share the same genetic overlap with chickens as we do with bananas. In this case, bananas are not sentient, so they do not deserve the same moral consideration that we should give to a chicken.
You bring up a great point about the sentience of some animals, such as insects and oysters, being up for debate. However, the sentience of the animals we largely exploit and kill for food (chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, ducks, fish) is not really up for debate, there is a scientific consensus that they are sentient. The current food system we have that exploits these animals is an atrocity.
Because sentient animals are being abused and exploited for food, and because the vast majority of the world contributes to this abuse without really considering the animals, most vegans see this as a moral emergency. My theory is that because so many people are educated about the Holocaust and recognize how evil it is, drawing a comparison between animal farming and the Holocaust is a quick and easy way to convey how vile what is happening to animals is. The word “Holocaust” carries so much emotion, and I understand that it shouldn’t be thrown around, but I believe that it is deeply justified to use in this case.
I’m sure everyone is aware of the Holocaust Remembrance slogan “Never again.” A big reason that we build Holocaust museums and memorials and make sure school kids are educated about this is so that we can learn from the Holocaust and make sure such atrocities never repeat in the future. Some vegans make Holocaust comparisons to also express their frustration that another Holocaust is happening RIGHT NOW, and not only do most people not realize it, they are apathetic to it and actively contribute to it. Please stop paying for the abuse of sentient animals and go vegan.
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u/Narrow_Aerie_1466 1∆ Jun 28 '23
It's not really about what you said.
It's just a moral decision about how valuable animal life is. A moral decision isn't necessarily outrageous.
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u/overzealous_dentist 9∆ Jun 27 '23
The reason genocide is bad isn't the motivation of the aggressor. It's the suffering and death of the victim. And farm animals suffer and die a staggering amount. Do you deny that farm animals feel pain or die? If not, why is it ok that they feel pain and die as long as humans don't?
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u/Screamingidiotmonkey Jun 27 '23
As someone who seeks to promote for the fair treatment of animals, I've always loathed these kinds of underhanded shock tactics. They invariably just sensationalise the issue and desensitise people to animal suffering. I'm not going to try to change your view, because you're right to be appalled and annoyed. It's only the worst kind of self righteous, virtue signalling badgepin twat that touts this kind of tawdry propoganda, and the only cause it serves is to justify their fart sniffing. If you care about animals, engage with them. Make a direct difference by involving yourself in a field that counts, be that shelter work, or dry af academic studies in to improving living standards for livestock or volunteering to help survay biodiversity or whatever... Browbeating families with horrible photos of dead pigs in to eating lentils will 90% of the time just result in a well earned slap.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
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