Deathics

The politics of death form a large part of the politics of veganism. A central aim of veganism, as I understand it, is to avoid responsibility – direct or indirect – for creatures’ deaths. But why is this considered a worthwhile aim? I would suggest that it is considered worthwhile based on the assumption that the acts of killing and of being killed are, all too often, painful for the participants. (Incidentally, I think this assumption is correct.)

So the desire to avoid killing stems from the desire to avoid inflicting pain.

Why do we worry about inflicting pain on other animals? Not all creatures do.

Does a lion, for instance, as it sinks its teeth into the throat of an antelope, pity the antelope for the pain caused? If so, the pity does not show (at least, not to us). Should we feel any more pity for a cow being slaughtered than the lion feels for the antelope? If so, why?

Because we have a choice about whether or not to cause the pain, that’s why. The lion knows of no other means of sustenance than to eat the creatures it kills. We do: we can kill plants to eat, instead of killing creatures to eat. Among the crops, animals will still be killed, but not by us: arachnids will still eat insects; certain birds will still eat arachnids; snakes will eat mice. Some or all of these creatures may experience pain as they are predated among the crops, but it will not be our fault. We will not use insecticides. Our fungicides will prioritise the life of the plants we need to preserve for our survival over the lives of parasites that would kill them, and we will be careful to use fungicides that are animal-safe.

So far, so consistent.

But why do we think pain is worth avoiding? Not all cultures do.

The fact that we instinctively find pain unpleasant when we experience it ourselves means that we normally wish to avoid it ourselves. But it does not follow from that that we should wish to avoid inflicting pain on others. After all, we cannot feel their pain.

Perhaps this needs examining by breaking the problem into sets of cases.

It’s obvious that if we inflict pain on a creature capable of remembering it and of understanding that the pain was inflicted intentionally, then the creature will tend to avoid voluntarily helping us for as long as it remembers the incident. This could be a problem if we want to collaborate with that creature: a horse we want to ride, for instance, or a human being we want to work with. So in this set of cases, we want to avoid inflicting pain, but not for altruistic reasons.

But why else would we want to avoid inflicting pain? Why does it make us uncomfortable to see another creature in pain?

I don’t ask this idly, because whatever it is that makes us altruistic about inflicting pain is weak enough to be over-ridden (in cases where is present at all) regularly, in war, in the meat industry, and in various entertainments (hunting and bull-fighting, for instance). If we can deduce what is being over-ridden, we might learn how, and thus prevent it. Or we might decide – but consciously - that there’s no need.

Where’s this going next? Over to you.