For the health of the chickens

Isaac Bashevis Singer

One of our major political parties recently mailed me an issues survey. Among the items whose importance I was to rank for the 2012 presidential election was "civil and human rights." Sensitized by my reading of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, I wrote in the margin, "What about animal rights?"
    Isaac Bashevis Singer asked about them too. According to Foer, the Nobel Laureate Singer (for Literature, 1978)

argued that animal rights was the purest form of social-justice advocacy, because animals are the most vulnerable of all the downtrodden. He felt that mistreating animals was the epitome of the "might-makes-right" moral paradigm. We trade their most basic and important interests against fleeting human ones only because we can. [emphasis mine] Humans are unique, just not in ways that make animal pain irrelevant. Think about it: Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn't matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?
    Usually, ethical decision making means choosing between unavoidable and serious conflicts of interest. In this case, the conflicting interests are these: a human being's desire for a palate pleasure, and an animal's interest in not having her throat slit open. [pp. 213-214]

    Wikipedia says that Singer

often included vegetarian themes in his works. In his short story, The Slaughterer, he described the anguish of an appointed slaughterer trying to reconcile his compassion for animals with his job of killing them. He felt that the ingestion of meat was a denial of all ideals and all religions: "How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?" When asked if he had become a vegetarian for health reasons, he replied: "I did it for the health of the chickens."

Sam Harris

When I returned to Sam Harris's latest book this morning (The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values), I checked its index for "animal rights." I didn't find an entry specifically for that, but I did find "animals, suffering of" and checked its references:

There are many species of animals that can suffer...The use of apes in medical research, the exposure of whales and dolphins to military sonar—these are real ethical dilemmas, with real suffering an issue...The ethical question—if one is actually concerned about human and animal well-being—is utterly straightforward. [p. 171]
    ...Leaving aside the fact that economic inequality allows many of us to profit from the drudgery of others, most of us pay others to raise and kill animals so that we can eat them. This arrangement works out rather badly for the animals. How much do these creatures actually suffer? How different is the happiest cow, pig, or chicken from those who languish on our factory farms¹? We seem to have decided, all things considered, that it is proper that the well-being of certain species be entirely sacrificed to our own. We might be right about this. Or we might not. For many people, eating meat is simply an unhealthy source of fleeting pleasure. [emphasis mine; I would guess that Harris is a vegetarian—see below] It is very difficult to believe, therefore, that all of the suffering and death we impose on our fellow creatures is ethically defensible.... [pp. 210-211]

    I googled "sam harris vegetarian" and found that he appeared on Bill Maher's program on October 21, 2009, where he said:

As well as being an atheist, I'm also a vegetarian (aspiring vegan). Why is it that the vast majority of Christians eat meat and contribute to the destruction of "Gods creation"? I've harmed nothing, and since I experienced the revelation that is vegetarianism many years ago, I've completely avoided "meat" and tried to (politely) dissuade others from doing so [sic] as well.

    Harris put "meat" in quotation marks, I trust because he recognizes it as a euphemism for the particular animal that is being eaten (something with a face, as a friend commented recently).
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1. According to Foer, 99% of the meat consumed in the United States is factory-farmed, and because of its abundance and low price Americans are eating much, much more of it than ever. Factory farmers are in business for a profit. And their bought legislators are in the business of protecting the industry.

A feisty liberal take on Obama's "civility"

In his September 11 "New Rule" column, "Float Like Obama, Sting Like Ali," Bill Maher takes exception to President Obama's sweet, conciliatory tone. Excerpt:

The Democrats just never learn: Americans don't really care which side of an issue you're on as long as you don't act like pussies. When Van Jones called the Republicans assholes, he was paying them a compliment. He was talking about how they can get things done even when they're in the minority, as opposed to the Democrats, who can't seem to get anything done even when they control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and Bruce Springsteen.
    I love Obama's civility in the face of such contumely, his desire to work with his enemies, it's positively Christ-like. In college, he was probably the guy at the dorm parties who made sure the stoners shared their pot with the jocks. But we don't need that guy now. We need an asshole.
    ...Stand up for the 70% of Americans who aren't crazy.
    And speaking of that 70%—let's call them the sentient majority—when are we going to actually show up in all this? Tomorrow Glenn Beck's army of zombie retirees are marching on Washington in protest of, well, everything.... [And they did march.]

Are we liberals indeed reluctant to assume the top dog role, much as I had to seek counsel to try to regain my dog's respect?

Movie "Religulous" demands new rating category

Since I began posting a rating for each movie I watch (about two years ago), I've twice had to create a new category to accommodate the latest movie. First there was UBOO, for the Unwatchably Bad or Otherwise Offputting movie "Bordertown," then EO for the ExtraOrdinary movie "Lars and the Real Girl." Now, for Bill Maher's 2008 documentary, "Religulous" (directed by Larry Charles), I've had to create MS, or Must See. "Religulous" is, in my opinion, a movie you must see. MS is paired with one of the other, more traditionally "quality" ratings—E (for Excellent) in the case of "Religulous."
    The obvious reason for the MS rating is the film's urgent call to grow up and abandon religion in order that humans might have a better chance of avoiding self-destuction. In this, "Religulous" adds Maher's voice to that of the writer Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Religion and Letter to a Christian Nation, whom Maher interviewed recently. (In that interview, Harris, perhaps jokingly, admitted that he'd probably stolen a few lines from Maher.)
    The movie viewers and book readers who most need to see the movie and read the book of course won't do so, even if ideally they would watch and read and consequently throw off religion. These include primarily (for Maher, I'd say) Muslims, whose militancy and the militancy of their book, the Qur'an, are emphasized in the movie, but also Christians, Mormons, religious (as opposed to merely ethnic) Jews, and, of course, the odd assortment of religious kooks of one sort or another whom Maher encountered for shockingly entertaining effect: self-styled messiahs, hallucinogenized nirvanans, and recipients of messages from gods or extraterrestrials.
    But at least the indifferently irreligious might be willing to watch "Religulous" and (one hopes) become less indifferent to, if not actively critical of religion.
    And everyone already in the know about religion will enjoy Maher, the collage of clips from old movies about the Israelites or the Crucifixion or warring Mohometans, the visit to the Crucifixion theme park in Orlando, and especially his nearly incredible interview subjects. (However, Maher's interview of Francis Collins, famous Christian scientist and President Obama's chosen director of the National Institutes of Health, seemed perfunctory and inconsequential.)
    "Religulous" is funny, informative, and alarming. A Must See movie. Because of the reason for that rating, it is most appropriate that I watched the movie on the eighth anniversary of the Muslim attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and (unsuccessfully) the Capitol or the White House.

Another striking feature of "Religulous," especially for those who have seen Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" and "Brüno" (both also directed by Larry Charles; I haven't seen the latter yet but am familiar with it), is the way Maher engages his subjects, so unlike Cohen's. Maher presents himself as himself, skeptical, courteously (if assertively) good-natured, and surprisingly respectful for the most part. Cohen submerges himself in outrageous roles and manipulates his subjects mercilessly.

To see the list of my recently viewed movies (temporarily expanded to the last fifty or so) here's a direct link to the spot on my sidebar.

Bill Maher interviews Sam Harris

Bill Maher recently interviewed Sam Harris on "Real Time with Bill Maher." It was Harris's 2004 book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, in which I found a for-me pivotal expression of many of my own thoughts about religion. Maher's feature film, "Religulous," was released late last year. You can watch Maher's interview of Harris on YouTube.