I really had no intention whatsoever of questioning my own morality.
But I’ve always had a soft spot for philosophy, ever since I took Introduction to Philosophy during my sophomore year in college. It struck me that a philosopher can think terribly deeply about subjects with hardly any relationship to everyday life, and feel satisfied.
So, occasionally, when everyday life becomes too much for me, I seek refuge in online discussions about philosophy. This happened a couple of days ago, when I innocently clicked on a YouTube link titled:
Peter Singer: ordinary people are evil
That’s something I have long suspected, and in the video, ethics professor Jeffrey Kaplan made a good case for my belief, based on a rather famous philosophical essay written in 1972 by a young man named Peter Singer. The essay was “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.”
I am, of course, including myself in the definition of “ordinary people”.
You can view professor Kaplan’s half-hour video here.
Turns out, Peter Singer later made something of a name for himself by publishing a book called Animal Liberation, in which he proposed that humans have a moral obligation to treat animals with the same respect as we treat other humans, or at least, something approaching the same respect… based on the knowledge that animals, like humans, are able to enjoy a somewhat satisfying life, if allowed to make decisions for themselves. Instead of having humans make all the decisions.
But more importantly, for Mr. Singer, is the knowledge that animals are able to suffer.
Which humans are also able to do. Ask me how I know.
Either before or after writing Animal Liberation, Mr. Singer became a vegetarian. Once you’ve decided to liberate the animals, you really don’t have much choice.
Anyway, I finished watching the video, about suffering and morality, and then went in the kitchen and made myself a chicken salad sandwich. Which tasted delicious.
But not as delicious as it used to.
That night, I lay in bed, thinking about the hundreds — thousands, really — of chickens that have been killed on my behalf, so I could consume them as food.
I imagined myself as a chicken, living in a cage, barely able to move, surrounded by two dozen of my closet relatives, who were also barely able to move. In my imagination, we were all females. Not a rooster in sight. Which is to say, the opportunities for romance were non-existent.
You can laugh at the idea of chicken romance if you want. But stuck in my tiny cage, that’s all I could think about. Certainly, I didn’t want to think about my ultimate fate, and the fate of all my sister chickens.
Yesterday, I met a friend for lunch, and ordered a taco salad. The waiter asked what kind of meat, and without thinking, I said, “Chicken.”
I suppose I could have said, “Oh, no meat, thank you. I don’t want to be responsible for the suffering of a sentient being.”
But I just said, “Chicken.” Being, myself, an ordinary person.
What if I didn’t eat the chicken?
Would she have a chance at romance?
Probably not. Probably, some other ordinary person would eat her.
But not Peter Singer.