Pain Vs. Pleasure
This post is from a series of blogs related to Matthew Scully’s book, Dominion*.
We could learn from the basic philosophy of those who once hunted and raised animals for survival (prior to meat becoming industrialized) who believed:
- It is morally permissible to raise and slaughter animals for food, particularly when necessary to promote our own survival–a moral good.
- When we take animal life to nourish ourselves, there is sacrifice involved. The loss of life has meaning.
- Even in slaughtering animals, we have at least a minimal obligation to protect animals from unnecessary suffering.
Now, because of advanced agricultural production, eating animals is not necessary to our survival.
So we are no longer weighing inhumane practices
against
our
need
to
survive;
we are weighing inhumane practices
against
our
desire
to
eat
what
gives
us
pleasure.
I’ll leave you with a final quote from Scully:
“But I don’t answer to inevitabilities, and neither do you. I don’t answer to the economy. I don’t answer to tradition and I don’t answer to Everyone. For me, it comes down to a question of whether I am a man or just a consumer. Whether to reason or just to rationalize. Whether to heed my conscience or my every craving, to assert my free will or just my will. Whether to side with the powerful and comfortable or with the weak, afflicted and forgotten. Whether as a [buyer] in a free market, I answer to the god of money or the God of mercy.” (p.325)
For the next blog in this series, please click here.
*See “Shop Local” in the categories at sarahcunningham.org for purchase options.