Today in class we talked about Wallace’s Consider the Lobster. I take the position that all sentient beings have innate desires for self-preservation and individual cultivation. By cultivation I mean that beings naturally seek to fulfill their own inner nature, which is the modified telos offered by Glazebrook in her article. Many people have feelings of empathy for lobsters whenever they’re boiled to death and expound alternative ways to deal with killing them that doesn’t resort to this kind of torture. With the exception of PETA members and other animal rights activists, the boiling factor seems to be the only problem for many people who’ve considered the lobster. It’s okay that we take them from their homes, kill them, and eat them. The only issue is the pain they experience in the process. We attempted to zero in on this feeling of empathy to address any moral obligations that it may incite. The class was split on whether we should concern ourselves with this feeling or not. There didn’t seem to be much overall consensus in the end just as Wallace never reached a conclusion in his article. I don’t think that we can reach a decision based on feelings of empathy. There needs to be a more objective reasoned argument to justify the degree to which the lobster’s well-being should be considered.
The most objective realization that I can envision is that lobsters have just as much natural worth as human beings do. They are equal to us in the grand scheme of things and so reason may follow that they deserve the same treatment that we grant ourselves. I admit this is a radical position in the light of modern culture, but I hold that it is the only way to justify any moral obligations. We uphold the rights to life, liberty, health, and (arguably) property for ourselves because they are required in order for us to cultivate our human nature. If we truly cared about the well-being of lobsters, then it would follow that we should concern ourselves with upholding their natural rights of life, liberty, and health. It seems that most empathetic individuals are only concerned with their physical health leading up to their imminent death and consumption. This would be equivalent to us being concerned about other human beings suffering physical pain without caring about them being taken from their homes into captivity or being killed and eaten. The option of developing a second-class code of ethics doesn’t seem as viable. We may infringe upon their natural life and liberty, but why should we draw a line when it comes to their physical pain. What’s the point in being healthy if you are not free to live your life? This line of reason seems to stem more from our impulse to feel pity for other sentient beings than any rational argument.
Another reasoned argument can be formed from my impartial premise that both lobsters and humans are animals and so we should be expected to act according to the law of the jungle. We are naturally predisposed to embrace our superiority over the lobster rather than our equality. It should be noted, though, that superiority can only be established subjectively. We need some sense of ego to establish our place in any hierarchical structure.
The way I see it we seem to have two choices before us. Either we embrace our superiority and treat lobsters as our food or we embrace our natural equality and treat them as free beings. Both seem like logical options to me. The latter seems to be more unbiased and just. Personally, I’m torn between these two options and don’t feel comfortable taking some shady middle ground on the issue. Either I genuinely care about the well-being of other animals beyond how they may serve me or I don’t care. My better reason tells me that I should care, but my natural conditioning tells me not to worry about it.
What does everyone else think? Do lobsters have natural rights? Are the two options presented the only logical ones? What’s the point in decreasing the pain lobsters feel whenever they’re losing their natural liberty and life anyway? How would a second class ethical code work?
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I feel like some people would sympathize with the lobster going through being boiled before it dies but at the same time you can not just think about this in the lobsters case. There are plenty other animals that can be tortured and have pain caused to them for our benefit. I dont necessarily think we need to think of them as equal or treat them better because then we would have to do the same to every other animal that we eat or kill that feels pain in the process.
ReplyDeleteI agree. As class progressed, I began to feel that the process leading up to the boiling was actually worse than being boiled itself, which may seem counterintuitive, if not controversial. I mean, the lobsters go though extended periods of torture essentially tied up and crammed into a box with dozens (if not hundreds in the case of the lobster festival) of its fellow animals. All of the lobsters are obviously distressed since these conditions contradict their natural habitat of solitude. Lobsters are captured and then shipped (which likewise cannot be too pleasant of an experience) to restaurants and supermarkets, where they are kept like this until someone buys them. Overall, this amounts to many days of what I believe to be torture for the lobsters. Ultimately, I feel like the torture doesn’t begin at the pot; it begins at the fishing boat. In a way, boiling the lobster is just more torture, although it does eventually prevent the lobster from experiencing even more pain in the future, albeit if it is by death. It’s sad, but it seems to me that the lucky lobsters are unfortunately the first ones to get boiled, since they end up suffering for a shorter period of time in the long run.
ReplyDeleteI realize that this doesn’t answer the question of whether we should kill the lobster before boiling it or not. But I think it does show that we should respect the lobster’s natural rights. By taking away a lobster’s freedom and torturing it for extended periods of time, we blatantly disregard its natural rights. This same idea applies to other animal food sources. I think that if we did make a lobster code of ethics while maintaining our right to eat lobster, it would require us to try to minimize lobster suffering from the boat to the plate. It seems that we really don’t know how to do this yet due to the difficulties with understanding the lobster nervous system, but I think the general consensus is that a swift kill is much better than boiling. Changes that come to my mind are limiting the amount of lobster in storage tanks, creating bigger tanks, or killing the lobster prior to shipping and storage. Hopefully, we will be able to devise a way that will decrease lobster suffering and satisfy picky gourmets who will only eat the freshest lobster (I suggest a blind taste test to see if these people can really taste the difference!).
This argument about the just treatment of lobsters and how to most humanely "prepare" them for dinner appears to me as being an issue related to how we view our natural instincts. I believe we are the most morally-minded creatures, seeing as we have higher cognitive functions that most other creatures. We have the ability to feel obligated and, when we presumably step over the line, guilty, to our moral code. However, I think the question lies in whether we are pushing too many of our ethics and morality onto the lobster, which is scientifically proven to be on a different cognitive level than we are. Asked another way, would the lobster think twice before boiling us alive if it were the more dominant creature? I think the answer would not be in our favor.
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ReplyDeleteI would agree that the issue of boiling lobsters doesnt seem to matter much, that the lobsters feeling of discomfort as it dies is interfering with its internal goals in just that single moment, and is far outweighed by interfering with their ultimate telos, to live free and reproduce in the natural world. Its pretty interesting that we care more about that one instant than the rest of the lobsters life.
ReplyDeleteVery, very well said Curtis. I don't know if you were the one to bring this topic up in class, but I totally agreed with you. The main topic discussed in class was pain not anything about being taken out of their natural habitat, etc. I do feel lobsters have an equal part in this world. Everyone has heard about how the death of just one species can completely disrupt the whole ecosystem of our planet. If the lobster ceases to exist, the oceans will not have an essential cleaners or "garbagemen of the sea." That is a critical part of ocean ecology. One upset in lobster populations that are worldwide can mean drastic problems for the oceans and further the terrestrial beings including humans.
ReplyDeleteI think our superiority is all in our heads. I don't feel we were meant to be this way, we were taught to be this way. If you teach a child that we must respect nature and its beings because we are all equal, then that is what that child will believe. And then, another nature vs nurture thing comes about. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I feel it is all on how we are taught. Saying it's just my nature is an easy way out, unacceptable. We kill beings, and many beings will kill us too, but they do it out of hunger or fear or anxiety. We do it for food and sport/fun as in hunting.
I think we should reduce/eliminate pain for the lobster. Yes we are going to kill it anyway but why torture the thing when we have already put it through such stress. We have the option to use our minds and do the right thing. There’s no excuse to torture creatures when there are more ethical ways to go about it.