Days Without Alcohol - 46. February 14th without a glass of champagne seemed a little wrong, but I quickly got over it. I am finding it easy to surmount the hurdles that I thought might trip me up.
I saw a report about the bad treatment of animals being transported across the world to be eaten the other day and I've been thinking about it a bit. As a vegetarian I used to believe that if I didn't eat meat, that would save the lives of animals, but
as I realised last year in actual fact if less people ate meat it would actually mean that those animals never got to live. Is it better to have never existed or to have lived in order to be eaten? It's a philosophical and moral conundrum.
Personally I now believe that we should be making sure that the quality of life that animals get is the best that we can possibly manage, and if they have a comfortable and protected life this is in some ways preferable to the terrifying life in the wild. And the better we can make their lives, the more forgivable the ultimate slaughter of them and all of their friends and family will be. Ideally we should be aiming to send cows around the world by plane with a first class service. That might make meat quite expensive though and then only very few people will be able to afford it and once again millions of animals will never get to experience life, because farmers will be forced to move into different areas to make money.
And, of course, animals can not make the moral decision to give up their lives, until Douglas Adams' idea of the animal that wants to be eaten and who is able to tell you that comes into force. However, human beings are capable of such a judgement and I was wondering today if that might be a solution. If a human being could make a choice that his or her body would at some point in the future be used to make food, then that would overcome the ethical implications. If at the age of 16 you were promised ten years of cosseted life, living like a king in a big palace, with a million pounds a year to spend and people caring for your every need and making sure no harm comes to, but that at the end of that time you would be humanely slaughtered and made into pies - how many people do you think might go along with that? It's not a bad deal. A guaranteed ten years in luxury in return for your meat. You might be tempted if you believe in quality, not quantity of life. And then no one would get upset that innocent animals were being slaughtered for food, because the food would have signed a contract saying it didn't mind. Everyone's a winner.
The only problem I can really see is that this ethical human meat would be tremendously expensive and could really only be bought by other people who were waiting themselves to be made into pies at some future date. And ultra rich cannibals. But it's an interesting dilemma. Would you rather have a long life in poverty or a short life living like a god?
I think you'd find enough people willing to do it, though it would still mean that animals would have no commercial value and thus would not be bred in anything like the numbers they have now. But at least we'd know when we tucked into a burger that we did so with the consent of the rich, fat bastard that we were eating. And it would also be quite cool to know that we were eating the rich, though the lean meat of the poor might be more tasty. Still we could just hunt them down at night and cook them - they're poor. Who cares if they die?
I am not drinking any more. I need to think of some vice.
Happy Valentine's Day.
