Post by moritz on Nov 10, 2010 1:44:02 GMT -8
Josh,
All this talk of morals makes me want to share with you a couple of thoughts that are currently running up and down my brain. It’s a personal testimony and I think it might help illustrating the points I’ve been trying to make in the other thread. It's a huge read, sorry bout that. Take your time!
I come from a family with a big hunting tradition. As far as I can trace it back all my male German relatives have been hunters: my great-grandfather was a hunter, my grandfather and his brothers and cousins were hunters, my father and my uncle are hunters. Some of my earliest memories play in our hunting lodge or in the raised blind in the forest with my dad.
Then there is my mother who can’t relate to hunting. She loves and projects human feelings and emotions into animals. My mother has been my main attachment figure as a child. Yes, I cried when I saw “Bambi’s” mother being killed by a mean hunter. My mothers view of animals projects the paradox of the society I live in: a society that consumes all kinds of meat without any trace of a bad conscience and at the same time increasingly heaves animals to the same moral level as humans*. A society that disavows that the meat they buy in the supermarket once was the living thing they so love.
In the past decades, hunting lost heaps of it’s social status. Hunters are facing acts of sabotage by animal protectors, are being called murderers and find themselves in pretty much total defense. They are in a constant struggle to lobby for their interests, as their rights and privileges have been cut down bit by bit in the course of time. And they are constantly struggling to provide a philosophical and pragmatic legitimation for their existence. They’ve totally changed their paradigm from a chauvinistic dismissal of any criticism in the beginning to a very careful presentation to the outside world as they see their case going down the drain.
In the midst of this social conflict I find myself confronted with the hopes of my father, that his sons will carry on the traditions of their forefathers and a feeling of “oughtness” provided by my social surroundings telling me that the killing animals is immoral. I’ve acquired the hunting license (you need a license for everything in Germany ) but I’m still struggling with the devil and the angle on my left and right shoulders. I think it is quite easy to analyse this case and yet the analysis doesn’t solve the problem.
The question of whether it really is immoral to kill or eat animals comes first. Biblically we have an open and shut case: Not only does God require the killing of animals to his honor, but the Bible also instructs us in detail which animals we are allowed to eat and kill and which not. It is explicit in saying who is made in the image of God and hence of bigger value. So where does this moral notion come from? The hunters I know can’t relate. Their experience, upbringing and routine gave them an entirely different perspective on things.
Proposition 1: The reason why I have this feeling of “oughtness” telling me that killing animals is wrong doesn’t stem from God, but from my mother, who has grown up as a sheltered city child in a society in which eating meat and practicing hunting became more and more unnecessary. She has passed her views on to me and the society that gave her these views to begin with, consolidated them.
I have seen strong emotional rejections of hunting by my fellow countrymen and as a social being I’m receptive of such signals: nobody wants to become the culprit. As a matter of fact now that I’m officially a “hunter”, it feels like a kick in the belly everytime I hear people accusing hunters of murder, even if they aren’t directing this accusation at me. It kinda feels like I sold my soul.
Proposition 2: The collective is stronger than the individual in a very mundane and pragmatic sense: living in social collaborations is a surviving strategy. Being empathetic and receptive to the rules and fashions of the group is of essential importance in order to benefit from all the advantages the group offers (protection, alimentation, etc.).
Those who never share and never stick to the rules are likely to become outcasts because they contribute nothing to the automatic cost-benefit calculation. Our ability to resonate with values is an evolutionary legacy. The content of the values however isn’t engraved in stone. It doesn’t have to be logical, it doesn’t have to be pragmatic, it might as well simply be random. Peer pressure is a well explored phenomenon. One might be inclined to do something one knows isn’t good (like for instance smoking) simply because the “oughtness” built up by the group becomes overwhelming. And it cuts the other way as well:
When I’m in the society of hunters or people who at least have no problem with hunting, my inner conflict doesn’t exist. I even have a hard time communicating to them what the reasons for my inner conflict are. It seems so obviously okay to go hunting, that I’m wondering what I was struggling with. In the light of the elaboration of proposition 2, it's an obvious thing: I'm morally caught between two stools.
Proposition 3: What is right and what is wrong varies from society to society. A lot of different factors play a role.
If we go to some countries in the third world, where people would walk for miles in order to get a piece of rotting meat we wouldn’t even feed to a hog, and tell them that the killing of animals is immoral, what would their reaction look like? I’ve recently read an article in which a hunter tells about his experiences with “primitive” hunters (Inuit, Amazonians, African tribes, etc.). He says he was always disappointed because he had this vision of “true hunters” living in total harmony with nature and projecting some sort of archaic nobility, when in reality they were most pragmatic in their hunting. They did what they had to do in order to stay alive and they didn’t give a damn about the suffering of the animal. In Germany, there is this codex among hunters that you have to respect the animal as a fellow creature of nature, that you have to give it a chance (you may not use night vision tools, full automatic weapons, certain kinds of traps, etc.). Indigenous hunters don’t care about such restrictions. The content of morality in this case depends on the circumstances social groups find themselves in. The rejection of hunting stands in direct correlation with the prosperity and decadence of urban societies and their estrangement with nature that leads to a total transfiguration and distortion of the image of nature.
Another factor that influences the content of our moral values is pragmatism. There are a few values and conventions that can be found pretty much everywhere.
Proposition 4: Such “universal values”, upon analysis, will always prove to be of advantage for the group or of other direct or indirect use, even if the individual might have a disadvantage.
If you steal a bone from a dog, this dog, even if it has no means of moral reflection, will go for you and give you a hard time. The same goes for humans.
When I was a soldier in the army, I was trained and indoctrinated to be ready to sacrifice my life for the benefit of the German people. Evolutionary speaking this is counterproductive from the individual perspective but very productive from the collective perspective. The Sacrifice of a few ensures the survival of plenty. Bravery is a value that has to be emphasized in this regard. The individual needs the reward of his peers. Support our troops! Why? Because if they realize that nobody gives a damn, that they get no respect or other means of recognition they may as well consider to save their own skins and stop risking their lives in order to defend your ass.
Don’t murder! Violence causes counter-violence. This simple truth has a record as big as a cathedral. If you want your society to be stable, if you want to lower the risk of becoming a victim of violence and enter the world of pain, violence has to be condemned.
And so it goes on and on.
Proposition 5: Values that proved to work well are being passed on “memetically” from generation to generation to the point that many don’t even know why the reject or embrace what they reject or embrace.
Upon inspection, these values can prove to be of essential importance or a relict of past importance.
When it comes to inspecting the morals of hunting, my conflict isn’t solved. The truth is: from a pragmatic perspective, hunting has become unnecessary in societies like the one I’m living in. It once was essential for the survival of the group and hence gained its legitimation and enjoyed its high rank. The truth is as well, that hunting is the most honest way of providing meat for yourself and – if you do it right – the most livestock-friendly as well if you compare it to intensive mass animal farming: the animal lives in its natural habitat, independent of (and unspoiled by) humans and finds an unexpected, quick and unpainful death (again: if you do it right).
However, a person who holds the view that animals are to be treated like humans brings about heaps of trouble for the hunting-apologetic. Because providing yourself with meat isn’t an argument anymore. If one reads apologetics of hunting one can’t help noticing the similarities with the apologetics of slavery: natural order, natural superiority, the animal [slave] doesn’t feel the way we feel, “the Bible says …”, economic importance, history (its always been like this)…
And once this comparison is being made, one can’t help but realize that the lines are being drawn randomly. Racism was socially acceptable until the end of WWII (or even longer. In some societies it remains acceptable to the present day). In the process of civilazation** we have removed the previous line and went from racism to “speciescism”: humans are of greater value than anything else. Animals can be killed and eaten. And as our prosperity increases, the laws expand and one minority after another is gaining more rights, animal activists become the new abolitionists: Radicals, frowned upon by the majority of meat eaters and yet hitting some kind of nerve that is slowly but steadily firing its way into more and more heads. I wouldn’t be surprised if animal activists already found loopholes in the Bible in order to substantiate their views with scripture.
By now, this post is already way too long and there is still much more to say and discuss. But I think hunting serves as a good example to illustrate and analyze the roots of morality and conclude, that there is no evidence for a universal right and wrong. If there was a universal right and wrong, I would expect to feel at least this little itch inside everytime I act against God's rules. But here we have exactly the opposite case: God explicitly allows the killing and eating of animals and still I have the itch. To me, this is evidence against your proposition. The rationale I offered makes more sense, even if the implacations can be ugly.
*organizations the “Great Ape Project” are trying to ensure human rights for chimps, gorillas & co.
**more on that in: Elias, Norbert (1939): The Civilizing Process.
All this talk of morals makes me want to share with you a couple of thoughts that are currently running up and down my brain. It’s a personal testimony and I think it might help illustrating the points I’ve been trying to make in the other thread. It's a huge read, sorry bout that. Take your time!
I come from a family with a big hunting tradition. As far as I can trace it back all my male German relatives have been hunters: my great-grandfather was a hunter, my grandfather and his brothers and cousins were hunters, my father and my uncle are hunters. Some of my earliest memories play in our hunting lodge or in the raised blind in the forest with my dad.
Then there is my mother who can’t relate to hunting. She loves and projects human feelings and emotions into animals. My mother has been my main attachment figure as a child. Yes, I cried when I saw “Bambi’s” mother being killed by a mean hunter. My mothers view of animals projects the paradox of the society I live in: a society that consumes all kinds of meat without any trace of a bad conscience and at the same time increasingly heaves animals to the same moral level as humans*. A society that disavows that the meat they buy in the supermarket once was the living thing they so love.
In the past decades, hunting lost heaps of it’s social status. Hunters are facing acts of sabotage by animal protectors, are being called murderers and find themselves in pretty much total defense. They are in a constant struggle to lobby for their interests, as their rights and privileges have been cut down bit by bit in the course of time. And they are constantly struggling to provide a philosophical and pragmatic legitimation for their existence. They’ve totally changed their paradigm from a chauvinistic dismissal of any criticism in the beginning to a very careful presentation to the outside world as they see their case going down the drain.
In the midst of this social conflict I find myself confronted with the hopes of my father, that his sons will carry on the traditions of their forefathers and a feeling of “oughtness” provided by my social surroundings telling me that the killing animals is immoral. I’ve acquired the hunting license (you need a license for everything in Germany ) but I’m still struggling with the devil and the angle on my left and right shoulders. I think it is quite easy to analyse this case and yet the analysis doesn’t solve the problem.
The question of whether it really is immoral to kill or eat animals comes first. Biblically we have an open and shut case: Not only does God require the killing of animals to his honor, but the Bible also instructs us in detail which animals we are allowed to eat and kill and which not. It is explicit in saying who is made in the image of God and hence of bigger value. So where does this moral notion come from? The hunters I know can’t relate. Their experience, upbringing and routine gave them an entirely different perspective on things.
Proposition 1: The reason why I have this feeling of “oughtness” telling me that killing animals is wrong doesn’t stem from God, but from my mother, who has grown up as a sheltered city child in a society in which eating meat and practicing hunting became more and more unnecessary. She has passed her views on to me and the society that gave her these views to begin with, consolidated them.
I have seen strong emotional rejections of hunting by my fellow countrymen and as a social being I’m receptive of such signals: nobody wants to become the culprit. As a matter of fact now that I’m officially a “hunter”, it feels like a kick in the belly everytime I hear people accusing hunters of murder, even if they aren’t directing this accusation at me. It kinda feels like I sold my soul.
Proposition 2: The collective is stronger than the individual in a very mundane and pragmatic sense: living in social collaborations is a surviving strategy. Being empathetic and receptive to the rules and fashions of the group is of essential importance in order to benefit from all the advantages the group offers (protection, alimentation, etc.).
Those who never share and never stick to the rules are likely to become outcasts because they contribute nothing to the automatic cost-benefit calculation. Our ability to resonate with values is an evolutionary legacy. The content of the values however isn’t engraved in stone. It doesn’t have to be logical, it doesn’t have to be pragmatic, it might as well simply be random. Peer pressure is a well explored phenomenon. One might be inclined to do something one knows isn’t good (like for instance smoking) simply because the “oughtness” built up by the group becomes overwhelming. And it cuts the other way as well:
When I’m in the society of hunters or people who at least have no problem with hunting, my inner conflict doesn’t exist. I even have a hard time communicating to them what the reasons for my inner conflict are. It seems so obviously okay to go hunting, that I’m wondering what I was struggling with. In the light of the elaboration of proposition 2, it's an obvious thing: I'm morally caught between two stools.
Proposition 3: What is right and what is wrong varies from society to society. A lot of different factors play a role.
If we go to some countries in the third world, where people would walk for miles in order to get a piece of rotting meat we wouldn’t even feed to a hog, and tell them that the killing of animals is immoral, what would their reaction look like? I’ve recently read an article in which a hunter tells about his experiences with “primitive” hunters (Inuit, Amazonians, African tribes, etc.). He says he was always disappointed because he had this vision of “true hunters” living in total harmony with nature and projecting some sort of archaic nobility, when in reality they were most pragmatic in their hunting. They did what they had to do in order to stay alive and they didn’t give a damn about the suffering of the animal. In Germany, there is this codex among hunters that you have to respect the animal as a fellow creature of nature, that you have to give it a chance (you may not use night vision tools, full automatic weapons, certain kinds of traps, etc.). Indigenous hunters don’t care about such restrictions. The content of morality in this case depends on the circumstances social groups find themselves in. The rejection of hunting stands in direct correlation with the prosperity and decadence of urban societies and their estrangement with nature that leads to a total transfiguration and distortion of the image of nature.
Another factor that influences the content of our moral values is pragmatism. There are a few values and conventions that can be found pretty much everywhere.
Proposition 4: Such “universal values”, upon analysis, will always prove to be of advantage for the group or of other direct or indirect use, even if the individual might have a disadvantage.
If you steal a bone from a dog, this dog, even if it has no means of moral reflection, will go for you and give you a hard time. The same goes for humans.
When I was a soldier in the army, I was trained and indoctrinated to be ready to sacrifice my life for the benefit of the German people. Evolutionary speaking this is counterproductive from the individual perspective but very productive from the collective perspective. The Sacrifice of a few ensures the survival of plenty. Bravery is a value that has to be emphasized in this regard. The individual needs the reward of his peers. Support our troops! Why? Because if they realize that nobody gives a damn, that they get no respect or other means of recognition they may as well consider to save their own skins and stop risking their lives in order to defend your ass.
Don’t murder! Violence causes counter-violence. This simple truth has a record as big as a cathedral. If you want your society to be stable, if you want to lower the risk of becoming a victim of violence and enter the world of pain, violence has to be condemned.
And so it goes on and on.
Proposition 5: Values that proved to work well are being passed on “memetically” from generation to generation to the point that many don’t even know why the reject or embrace what they reject or embrace.
Upon inspection, these values can prove to be of essential importance or a relict of past importance.
When it comes to inspecting the morals of hunting, my conflict isn’t solved. The truth is: from a pragmatic perspective, hunting has become unnecessary in societies like the one I’m living in. It once was essential for the survival of the group and hence gained its legitimation and enjoyed its high rank. The truth is as well, that hunting is the most honest way of providing meat for yourself and – if you do it right – the most livestock-friendly as well if you compare it to intensive mass animal farming: the animal lives in its natural habitat, independent of (and unspoiled by) humans and finds an unexpected, quick and unpainful death (again: if you do it right).
However, a person who holds the view that animals are to be treated like humans brings about heaps of trouble for the hunting-apologetic. Because providing yourself with meat isn’t an argument anymore. If one reads apologetics of hunting one can’t help noticing the similarities with the apologetics of slavery: natural order, natural superiority, the animal [slave] doesn’t feel the way we feel, “the Bible says …”, economic importance, history (its always been like this)…
And once this comparison is being made, one can’t help but realize that the lines are being drawn randomly. Racism was socially acceptable until the end of WWII (or even longer. In some societies it remains acceptable to the present day). In the process of civilazation** we have removed the previous line and went from racism to “speciescism”: humans are of greater value than anything else. Animals can be killed and eaten. And as our prosperity increases, the laws expand and one minority after another is gaining more rights, animal activists become the new abolitionists: Radicals, frowned upon by the majority of meat eaters and yet hitting some kind of nerve that is slowly but steadily firing its way into more and more heads. I wouldn’t be surprised if animal activists already found loopholes in the Bible in order to substantiate their views with scripture.
By now, this post is already way too long and there is still much more to say and discuss. But I think hunting serves as a good example to illustrate and analyze the roots of morality and conclude, that there is no evidence for a universal right and wrong. If there was a universal right and wrong, I would expect to feel at least this little itch inside everytime I act against God's rules. But here we have exactly the opposite case: God explicitly allows the killing and eating of animals and still I have the itch. To me, this is evidence against your proposition. The rationale I offered makes more sense, even if the implacations can be ugly.
*organizations the “Great Ape Project” are trying to ensure human rights for chimps, gorillas & co.
**more on that in: Elias, Norbert (1939): The Civilizing Process.