Did you know on October 1st, 2011 we celebrated International Vegetarian Day? I know it is not a well known holiday but I see it as important as Thanksgiving. Instead of eating turkey, and ham, until we can’t take it anymore, we take one day out of the year to live as the vegetarians do. Of course this is really an awareness day to the populace of how one should be living, and not a simply a “let’s try something exotic” day. The question then arises why should be change our lifestyle from being vegetarian one day a year to everyday? Do animals have rights that we are neglecting? Or is this article falling on deaf ears? I want to claim that our understanding of rights (specifically a right to life in this article) and how we define who, or what may be entitled to this right could force us to stop eating meat and start living right.
In what understanding do we as humans understand rights, and how far do they reach? We bestow rights to humans because we have an understanding of right and wrong, and we want to make sure we ourselves have the best opportunities we can without causing harm. Truly rights are best understood to provide and help, but where is the line where rights begin and where do they end? A right to life may have some controversy to it, but as a society we generally accept that killing, or taking this right of life away from someone is to be considered wrong. Yet this becomes murky when we bring animals into the picture. Society raises animals simply to kill them for food, clothes, testing, sport, and many other practices to benefit human society. It is simply because we as humans do not see animals as holders of rights, but the product of property in a capitalist market. We treat animals based on the social contract of property exchange, and as commodities. It is wrong to harm an animal, but only because it is someone’s property and not because it is a living, breathing, feeling entity. The question I pose is as rights bearing individual how do we know killing an animal is okay or not? What is this line that we draw that shows a logical understanding that killing is wrong when it is a human and not when it is an animal.
To understand rights we need to understand how they come about. I want to begin by arguing loosely that rights first and foremost are not natural. If you believe that state is absurd then I would not expect you to change your mind in any way, so you can go read something else. Of course if you are open to this thought or generally curious of this assessment please continue. So, Jeremy Bentham a famous utilitarian ethicist (utilitarianism is a school of thought which asserts that what brings about the greatest amount of pleasure to the greatest amount of people is the correct action to do) and philosopher argued that natural laws and rights could not exist. The very thought that the physical natural order of the universe presents us with rights is silly at best. Natural laws in the universe may influence what we feel to be more correct, but nature does not proceed to give us this code of moral correct actions in any rational. If that was the case wouldn’t everybody have the same rights universally? Yet that is not the case and I claim rights are created and formed by the people in the community, society, or state that they live in and around. So, society is the people, and the people have to generally accept what rights are given and to whom. Looking back in recent history we see how society has needed persuasion to allow for rights to be bestowed on certain people. It began with white male land owners who had particular rights, and after civil rights protest for minorities, gender, age, and lifestyles spanning over several decades, we finally begin to see equal rights in the smallest sense. Rights have not been a collected bestowing in the beginning, and this should be proof enough that rights come from society. If rights are created when people want that action or right to be protected then it comes to be, and not from a supernatural, or natural force. So how can we justify these rights? The question now is where the logical and consistent line with whom receives the rights we make for ourselves?
One may argue that humans are only allowed to have rights because we are rationally capable to understand right, and understand why we have them. The argument understands that animals are not rational creature that cannot grasp the idea of rights, and will continue to act as irrational animals, hunting and killing other animals because they do not have the cognitive powers as humans. Yes it is true; animals do not have the mental capacities for abstract thought or rational understanding of rights. A lion will never understand that killing is wrong and she should begin growing soybeans to live. The problem with this argument of rationality is that not all humans have this ability either. A newborn baby, a person with mental issues, and even brain dead individuals do not have the power to understand his or her rights. So would we strip them of their right to life because they don’t understand such a right? In truth we would be able to treat these non-rational people as animals simply because they are not rational beings. Yet we as people do not want to do this because they are human. This leads to the next argument.
Another person may say that humans only have the right to live because we are humans, and as part of the human society I favor us over all others. Most people will generally fall into this category of thinking. Since I am human I can protect other humans no matter the circumstance with rights and we all fit comfortably in this category, and everything else is subject to our whims. This argument has been rejected by another famous utilitarian ethicist and philosopher Peter Singer. He objects to this argument in his book Animal Liberation by claiming it to be speciesist. Speciesist is exactly what it sounds like, feeling your species is better than all other species because you are arbitrarily a part of that species and it has no other factors. Peter Singer claims that this is an immoral way of thinking and that it is unjustifiable to live with. Many who read this may feel this objection is no big deal and that humans are still better. I agree with Peter Singer in this case and I will show you how this is an incorrect to live by. Theoretically let us look at the structure of the argument of speciesism; this is placing superior status simply because you are part of this species, but what if I changed species to race? A racist is simple a person who puts himself and others in his race in a superior place over another race simply because he is a part of that race. We in our western society have already concluded that it is intolerable to think one individual is more important than another by skin tone. To say you are better simply by the melanin in your skin is arbitrary and illogical at best. So if we believe this, then we cannot accept the fact that being born arbitrarily into one species does not make us better than any other because of what we are. So if we allow for the speciesist argument to be upheld, theoretically we must allow for a racist to be justified in his argument. That probably will not sit well with most people because they see the problem with racism, and if speciesism is categorized as the same intolerable hate by arbitrary means, then we need to find another answer.
So what is the answer? How can humans who create these rights justify where they begin and where they end? Well since we understand what a right to life means we must be able to encompass all people without appealing to arbitrary arguments. Now that seems vague, and to accomplish this I will adopt Peter Singers view from his book, Animal Liberation, that we must use an approach of utilitarian ethics. Peter Singer’s argument in Animal Liberation states that if an individual can feel pleasure, then it can also feel pain. It is wrong to cause pain to anything because of the negative consequences it has using the utilitarian approach. So, one should never harm something that can feel pain unless that action which created the pain creates a surplus of pleasure for many others outweighing the pain that it caused. That is to say that unless the end result does something far greater than the negative impact you had to do in the action is not right to do. This argument will keep all people safe with their right to life, and it will encompass all animals who can feel pain and pleasure. So it is safe to assume an animal does not like pain and tries to stay away from pain as much as possible. This of course means that animals can no longer be used simple as means for ends that do not create higher pleasure then the amount of pain it caused to the animal of ending its life. So, now as a western society we must change our eating habits, our sports, our testing, and our fashion sense. We can no longer kill animals so we can simply look good, or eat an animal because we like the taste. As a western society we have the means of becoming vegetarians and living healthy lives. Soybeans can easily be grown in our society to feed everyone, along with the rest all the other vegetables we could live happy healthy lives without harming animals in the process. We do not have to eat meat to live thus we only eat meat now because of our favorable taste for meat. So if taste is why we eat meat, then we cause pain, and kill animals and take their happy lives away because of a quick minute of happiness from taste, a fleeting pleasure. This is not justifiable and we must stop this practice.
Now before everyone stops reading in frustration from what they assume the author to be a tree hugging, animal loving, vegetarian, peace pushing, college intellectual, liberal, Grateful Dead listening, hippie (which I am), I must make clear that this position would not change everything. With this utilitarian approach we cannot create pain unless the end result produces higher widespread pleasure to more people than the pain caused. So if hypothetically we found a monkey that could cure the HIV virus tomorrow for everyone in the world but we had to kill the monkey to do so, then we should kill the one monkey to save the world. The same would go with a healthy man, it makes no difference what it is, but if one man, or the monkey had to be killed to save the rest of the world from a terrible disease then that is completely justified. So when I say western society can live off soybeans I mean that just for the western society. In some cases a person would have to eat meat to survive, such as nomads in Africa. They may not have the means to be vegetarian if their soil is bad and they are hundreds of miles from anyone else. Then it seems that between life and death one is able to eat meat to maintain their life. I claim that our western society is not like this, and because it is not we have a responsibility to animals to become vegetarians because we can and we should. This argument creates an answer to a situation based on everyone’s happiness and how we must act accordingly to maximize the most amount of happiness. Thus if ethics is the concept of doing what is right, and being happy comes from doing what is right, then ethics should be making the most amount of individuals happy by not causing pain.
So rights are what humans decided what is best for the people living in their society at the time given the best factual understanding of themselves and others. Since this is the case we need to understand why we have these rights and how far they should stretch to. Since I focused on a right to life case it is shown that animals have the same rights as any other person might, because of the conditions of ending a life and what that might bring about. Truthfully our western society needs to begin shifting from a meat centered society to be ethically vegetarian. It may be hard to begin with, but who said being ethical was easy?