To meat or not to meat...

OK, so here's my latest dilemma. I've recently watched a few videos on YouTube by a user named strangeholm. These videos were a series devoted to answering questions about veganism, which as many of you may know is the ultimate vegetarian lifestyle - no animal products eaten at all. Now, most of the time I'd scoff loudly at the notion - us human beans have been eating animal flesh almost since we climbed down out of the trees, and indeed, our physiology is tailored to the mastication and digestion of meat. This is not to say that we should be meat eaters, but that it's the natural thing for us to do as far as evolution goes.

Strangeholm, however, expresses an ethical argument for veganism which is pretty darned difficult for me to ignore. I have, by and large, accepted the idea that we humans are no more "special" than any other creature on the planet; just because we are the most intelligent and self-aware doesn't mean we are the centre of all that is, was, and ever shall be, amen. The only bits of the universe that place a high premium on human existence are the bits that happen to be human themselves. So, if we are no different from all the other creatures that we share the planet with, shouldn't the same moral axioms that go for us, go for them?

Well, part of the problem is that we don't even apply those moral axioms to ourselves 100% of the time. In fact, it seems to be almost pathetically easy for us not to. We simply need to declare someone, or a group of someones an enemy, and we can strip them of humanity in our minds as quickly as we need to in order to award them some horrible fate. How can we talk of treating animals the way we treat ourselves when we treat ourselves so despicably?

I'd take this a step further. I think we treat animals horribly because we treat ourselves exactly the same way. We simply need to turn off our ability to empathize, to shift our attention away from the suffering of others. Actually inflicting that suffering becomes something of a trifle after that mental adjustment is complete. I might even go so far as to say that its evolutionarily adaptive- be concerned for the suffering of your own clan, those who share your genes, but ignore the suffering of those outside it, who might be in a position to consume resources and deprive you of mating opportunities. I'm just guessing at that part, but it seems likely enough.

What makes it even worse, if such can be said, is that those of us who eat meat genuinely enjoy it. Even more, we look forward to it. Tell me, my meat eating friends, who doesn't begin to salivate at the thought of a nice, juicy steak on the barbecue? Couple our enjoyment of meat and the ease with which we ignore suffering, is it really any wonder that factory farms are so proliferate?

Anyhow, these are just my initial thoughts on the matter. Now that I've gone this far, I could probably write a paper on it, but I'm more interested in hearing people's responses to this than spouting off several thousand more words.

Here's the video that started me thinking about all this crazy stuff.

Update: Strangeholm also has an interesting blog, which is over in the sidebar, but the entry of interest is here.