Letters to the Editor
PaulBC
Published Letters: 237 Editor's Choice: 24
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Sorry, I never got this logic
[Read the article: Belly of the beast]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I completely agree. If you can't kill it, you shouldn't eat it."
By similar logic, if you want to have indoor plumbing, you ought to do a stint at the sewage treatment plant.
If you expect to be protected from violent criminals, you ought to work as a guard at a maximum security prison.
If you want to enjoy living within the secure borders of a nation state, you ought to serve in its military.
Granted, people do make the third claim. I have never heard anyone make the first two, but no doubt they would be educational experiences and give you a new appreciation of the things you take for granted.
But the point here is that mostly, we are willing to pay others to do the work that we find arduous, disagreeable, nauseating or otherwise objectionable. That applies to the art of the butcher as well as it does to anything else.
Now a distinction between the slaughterhouse and the waste water treatment plant is that few people object to waste water treatment on moral grounds. But so what? Either slaughtering animals is wrong, in which case you should forgo its benefits, or it is acceptable if unpleasant to contemplate, in which case you may keep your hands clean and pay the butcher. Working as a butcher would certainly be educational will not confer any special dispensation either. To be honest, I think I prefer people who (like myself, yes) who eat meat but aren't super gungho about it to those who believe that it makes some difference to the pig that they are "man enough" to kill it themselves.
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@lucienrau
[Read the article: Belly of the beast]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]OK, but do you think people should spend a day working at their waste water treatment plant? (and I don't mean taking a tour wearing a mask) I think this would be at least as instructive. I don't really intend to do it myself, but I can see the value. I just don't phrase this as some kind of imperative. Yeah, it's enriching to know where things come from and where they go, but most of us don't, and well... things have actually worked out OK with that too. It's call division of labor, Adam Smith's pin factory, etc., etc.
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To elaborate on this one...
[Read the article: Belly of the beast]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"If you can't concience everything that went on in what you eat, you should eat something else."
I cannot conscience everything that goes on in our criminal justice system, and even in theory it is terrible to imagine taking away a human's liberty. (I was also just listening to a report on KQED about the disastrous California prison system, so it's fresh in my mind).
At the same time, I do expect to be able to walk in public and not be a victim of violence or property theft. I feel entitled to that protection. It's part of the social contract. Should I do a stint as guard in the state prisons in other to be justified in this? Not a rhetorical question... maybe you think I should. I wish the system were better, and I would pay more taxes to alleviate prison overcrowding and provide some possibility of rehabilitation when it is feasible (and change policies to avoid warehousing non-violent drug or parole offenders). But I also want some people just to stay put in jail because it would be a terrible thing for me and those I care about if they were allowed to roam free--and not because there is any real justice in this life.
You pay a fee for services. Whoever first wrote "the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker" didn't feel the need to experience being a butcher, because it was just a mundane job like the other two. Remorse is a luxury of modern life.
Did you ever think maybe some people are already OK with the whole idea of killing an animal? There is a presupposition that carrying out the slaughter of an animal confers a special moral benefit beyond that of any other job one most of us would rather pay for. I am just not buying it.