Addendum to Blog on Dynasties, Meat Eating and Vampires

In the previous blog I observed that the animals in Dynasties were surrounded by grazing land and that the spread of cattle farming was the cause of loss of habitat. Furthermore 30% of the Planet is dedicated to cattle farming. If we switched from eating meat we could return 25% of the planet back to wildlife over night.

An argument that might arise is why should I give up eating meat so that I can give the land back to lions and tigers so they can eat meat. A Human's wishes are greater than an animals, so it should be humans enjoying the meat not animals. If anyone doubts this then put a human and a tiger in a road and drive at them with a car without breaks: which one do you hit. We value the human life more. So naturally we say that the human should eat cattle and not the tiger.

But there is something wrong with this argument. Humans are not Tigers. Tigers don't have a moral consciousness, and they don't have freedom of choice. Or they might, but it is not dialectic like humans. You cannot sit in negotiation with a tiger, or discuss the plan. It is these qualities of moral judgement and freedom which make Humans so different from Tigers. Indeed it is these types of qualities which means that we chose to drive into the tiger and not the human.

Man the Hunter.
This is not to say that human's don't sometimes behave like tigers. I call this behaviour our animal side and referred to it in the blog on Little Drummer Girl. Human's can hunt just like animals. They can even hunt humans just like animals like in war for example. But no-one suggests that a hunting human is displaying any qualities that distinguish them from an animal. When humans hunt they are just being animals.

Man the Human
However Humans have an extraordinary side to them which is the ability to step outside themselves and look at things from the perspective of another. Some animals show basic abilities to do this. But, humans can really do this. They can completely replace their wishes with those of another, fully empathise, even become another like an actor. This leads to extraordinary behaviours like sacrifice. It is Jesus' birthday soon and regardless whether the story is true he was destined to die a brutal criminals death in place of us. Even if it is not true, we can experience the love and sacrifice of this and cannot fail to be deeply touched because we do understand sacrifice and this kind of humility.

So what does a humble, empathising human do when they meet an animal that wants to eat meat. Do they eat the animal or they do let it go an feed itself. Its easy to empathise and not wish to harm the animal, and a bit more difficult to empathise and support it when it goes and kills to feed itself.

So as an animal yes we kill of the tigers and put cattle on their territories to make burgers out of for the BBQ. But as a Human we respect its needs and give the tiger what it wants, and we are happy in this and marvel at its strange existence so different from our own. When it comes to feed ourselves we as omnivores luckily have hundreds of food items we can eat, and that choice makes our moral judgements very easy.

Imagine we were like Vampires and needed to drink human blood. Now that is a difficult moral decision. Do we kill the living and turn them into vampires so that we can live on a vampires or do we not feed and die. We actually its easy isn't it: we are already dead so we should just accept the inevitable and stop feeding and die. Most moral dilemmas in fact are very easy if you have empathy, humility and the ability to sacrifice.