In Defence of Life

There is a fantastic sense of ennui to be savoured in the days following Christmas. A great spiritual malaise haunts all things, as if they had lived the previous year only that they might experience the 25th of December. Nothing quite knows how to occupy itself, nor how best to prepare for an impending year of drudgery once again.

Christmas also brings with it the imponderable joy of consuming vast amounts of animal flesh - a habit I abjured a year or so ago, and one which I do not intend to reinstate. The only shame I have of my vegetarianism is that I did not commit to it earlier. This said, the practice of eating corpses lost its charm for me a very long time ago, but I was not in control of my diet until I went to university. The sole benefit of university, as far as I can perceive - the ability to eat as one wishes! Vegetarianism in my parents' house is seen as some regrettable idiosyncrasy, or a meaningless act of defiance. But then, these are probably viable criticisms of much of my behaviour.

I have been considering this post for a few days now, and whether it is at all fitting in a friendly blog to assail the habits of others. Experience has revealed that I nurse an almost physical pain at the recognition that I have deliberately been unkind to another, and a blog post such as this can be interpreted as nothing other than deliberate. Yet I do not think I am attacking people, rather people's habits, and people's habits are often thrust upon them by necessity, or ignorance, or fear. Therefore I cannot intimate that a tenant of a habit is necessarily characterised by it, nor that they should receive praise or punishment for it. The virtue of the idea itself is all that can be assessed, and it is man's task to take up virtuous habits as he descries them. I can say no more than this - I am assessing ideas. If we were to live in a world in which we feared offending others at all times, little would be said, for every argument is multifaceted, and there are a lot of people in this world, each of whom any opinion may offend. Moreover, the problem with this unremitting intolerance to the possibility of offence is that it affords the timid and the unthinking the greatest power. We should not wish to live in a world in which it is possible for someone without a cogent argument to overwhelm somebody with one.

I was watching River Cottage yesterday - a fantastic programme about a man so middle-class that he felt the need to flee to the countryside, in ostensible renunciation of his privilege. I do like Hugh, but it must be rather more simple to adopt the righteous indignation of the eco warrior when one has been to Eton and Oxford, and boasts a double-barrelled name. It is as if he has said, 'OK, I lived the first 20 years of my life in the upper echelons of this corrupt system; but, now that I have nothing more to sap from it, I'm quite happy to live the life of a peasant.' How charming. The whole show is undercut with the sense that he is exorcising some grim eidolons from his soul.

Anyway, this is all ancillary. What irked me was the way in which animals were treated, and the bizarre attitudes evinced herein. First, I am watching in near catalepsy as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall fills his cow's trough with some mixture or other, describing the high quality of the oats and how this is great for the cow, and then proceeds to turn to the camera and say, 'It will make you taste great, too.' There seemed to me in the tone, the angle, the setting, something so cunning, so self-serving, so cruel in the whole thing.

We have this warped conviction that we are in some way being kind to animals by feeding them some Waitrose provender before they're disparted into their constituent viscera (which, by the way, many people seem to refuse to eat, as if innards are somehow more vital, more life-giving to an animal than mere flesh. In this I believe we see an instinctive reluctance to destroy life). This renewed image of the kind farmer has only served to entrench our bloodthirsty tendencies. Yet there is, despite what many may insist, no humane way to kill a creature against its own will. This is a necessarily inhumane enterprise. Indeed, applied to humans, we term it murder. It should not matter that a murderer fed his victim a diet of Terry's Chocolate Oranges and expensive falafel before ending his victim's life - this does nothing to palliate the absolute nature of the offence. Death is irrevocable, and should be met with a commensurate unwillingness to impose it.

And of course there is an absolute ocean of hypocrisy to be addressed here. If I were to feed a friend's dog with some expensive tin of dog food, it would be quite unacceptable if I were to append the phrase, 'This will make you taste delicious.' In fact, it would be so bizarre, so alien to human practice that it would be quite comedic. Yet the horrors we commission against farm animals would be national news stories if committed with such scale and brutality on household pets. It would seem to us to be the most barbaric, medieval, depraved operation in recent history. But who can give a reason as to why a cat's life should be elevated beyond a cow's? This is the arrangement we endorse - we live in a world in which billions of animals live their lives in bondage and are slaughtered for our own gain, whilst simultaneously organisations such as the RSPCA are horrified if a dog is left in a bin. Of course the reason behind this outrage at crimes committed against household pets is that household pets are useful to us whilst alive, and farm animals are useful to use whilst dead. Our morality is clouded by our foul interests - our bloodthirsty mandibles, snapping at everything in their path. For example, a woman in the aforementioned episode of River Cottage tasted a rabbit stew. She was then asked, 'Are you put off by the fact that this was a fluffy bunny?' and she replied with, 'Maybe if it was a fluffy bunny, but this was wild.' Then it is quite fine to kill a rabbit which we would not have seen, but quite perverse to kill a rabbit from whose appearance we gain some enjoyment. Am I losing my grasp on reality? Can this be a world in which death is meted out on the basis of its recipient's degree of fluffiness? Surely death cannot be a matter we can treat with such idiocy. What a foul morality we advocate!

Why must man sire a path of brambles where he treads? Man will destroy whatever he can, until precisely the point at which his own safety is endangered. All beneath this point is despoiled with utter levity. You won't see Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wrestling an alligator for his pan-fried croc-nuggets. You will, however, see him packaging defenceless animals and sending them to various slaughterhouses with no real trouble. I wither at the absolute greed which infects all of mankind's actions. I'm sure I've mentioned it before - it is our philosophy of expedience! All things appear far more unobjectionable when they are the easiest means to an end from man's blasted perspective, if not overall. I think it is undeniable that far more people would renounce meat if it was an active decision to engage in its consumption, rather than to forgo it. This is to say, people generally nurture the habits their parents inculcate in them, and most people today are brought up to eat rotting cadavers. If it were possible for us to make a reasoned decision upon birth, for ourselves, who would choose to unnecessarily maim and wound for their own pleasure? Only the most devout sadist could bring himself to such a resolution. And I believe the word 'unnecessarily' is of overriding importance here. It does not make one a sadist to eat meat out of necessity - the fact that another creature perished in one's nourishment would be a cause for grief, but who here can judge one creature's life as more important than another's? Who could assuredly wear the mantle of Minos, and then who might do it gladly? Yet to sap life, to debauch beauty, to have the hubris to place one's own pleasure above the lives of others, all when this need not be the case - this is malice.

Then we do not have the divine equipment necessary to judge life, and it is mere arrogance to assert that we do, but what can be derived is that, if one cannot value one life against another, it must be preferable for both lives to continue if it is at all possible. We live in a country in which this is absolutely an accessible outcome - it is merely man's self-service and disregard for life which blights the endeavour. However, mankind believes it can judge the value of a life, through prices. Then in valuing each animal with an arbitrary number, one values none at all. By ascribing a cipher of pure dust to a creature's entire being, one destroys the being immediately. If we were sincere, we might admit that we know this to be true; it is common to express disapproval at the combination of sex and money, for example. It is somehow as if love itself has been destroyed, and we cannot bear the thought. Similarly, to be asked to ascribe a monetary value to one's friends and family would be absolutely unthinkable! In such a moment of judgement, the judged becomes the price, and nothing more.

Furthermore, think of the 'alien invasion' genre of films. The marauding aliens are invariably portrayed as wicked and consumptive - yet what do they commit which man does not commit daily and without remorse? The enslavement and eventual destruction of what we perceive to be inferior species, the destruction of all environments outside our own, the inexorable pursuit of economic gain above all else. Man's gross egotism deems all of this quite fine. It is only when it is committed against man that it becomes immoral! Who can stay sane in a world in which this kind of morality is ascendant? It even bears a personal importance - it suggests that, were each of our own lives to become convenient for man to destroy, it would immediately become moral to do so. Actions need only be inconvenient to man to become immoral actions, and convenient to man to become moral actions. The critic may think this is an exaggeration, but who can give a situation in which this is not the case? Think of the recent badger culls - previously, badgers were protected by law! Indeed, still are! Yet the moment it becomes convenient, economically in this case, the law is disregarded, and it suddenly becomes quite fine to kill badgers with abandon. Yet, to me, life is an absolute, and its destruction should not be countenanced with such indifference. The idea that money can reduce something sacred to vermin is a cause for lament. What avarice!

People say to me of my vegetarianism, 'Oh I couldn't do that, it would be really difficult,' as if I had made the decision that it is more convenient to refuse to eat meat in a meat-eating world. This is the power of this philosophy of expedience - it is entrenched in all minds. The point is that morals should be independent of practicality. Of course, we have precisely the obverse situation in today's barren world, economics sentencing the weak and the capital-deprived to death. The dollar is the judge, lashing its callous outcomes on the very weakest. Animals, lacking the ability to enslave themselves through work as we do, are forced to an even more regrettable end - slaughter. Yet, as with human matters, those with money can always choose to help those without, however economically inconvenient it may be. What is fundamentally right and just, and not what is convenient, should determine morality.

Then why must human life be buttressed by death? What rational person wishes to become a necropolis, a void of life? It seems that life in this world is a parody of itself, intent on the extirpation of other life - it is some kind of antitype against its own being, bent on its own elimination. In such a world, all is hostile. All is negation. Who desires a place in such an arrangement, when they need not do so?