Jul 25 2007
The steer who escaped into our conscience
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BY RALPH R. ACAMPORA
July 22, 2007
The story many Long Islanders have followed during the past few weeks of an escaped steer on the North Fork whose notoriety landed him a refuge away from the abattoir gets more perplexing the more you think about it. From a strictly agribusiness point of view, of course, the fugitive livestock presented only the problem of recapturing an ornery investment before its due harvest. Bad cow - get back into the pen.
But from the perspective of animal rights, the tale takes on a different tone altogether. “Moo,” as he came to be nicknamed, represented the fiery spirit of independence even domesticated animals still harbor. He broke free in a bid for liberation, impressed the public and was rewarded with sanctuary in the end. Good cow - move on to greener pastures.
Listen to animal advocates’ viewpoint, and you’ll be forced to confront what we normally prefer to leave hidden and forgotten: the ultimate destiny of farm animals, namely (dis)assembly-line slaughter. If you have the stomach, you can visit a slaughterhouse or else watch the recent documentary “Earthlings” (at isawearthlings.com) to reacquaint yourself rather graphically with the gruesome details.
Interestingly, once we remember or first learn of this reality, it’s not so much that Moo gained some unfair advantage over his tamer brothers (as some have been tempted to think), but rather that none of these unfortunates deserve the treatment their demise typically entails. Indeed, the bottom line of supermarket meat-eating is that the consumer buys and ingests something for the sake of taste that cost its original owners their very lives!
Put this way, and realizing that vegetarianism is a healthier option for dietary nutrition, it’s a wonder that we don’t close the slaughterhouses and wind down the livestock industry in a massive display of collective shame or gustatory grief.
And yet we don’t. Instead, we usually suppress the knowledge and keep a tight lid on our conscience.
This willful ignorance manifests in all sorts of ways, from the careful tucking away of killing and corpse-processing plants to the renaming of animals’ body parts once they are offered for consumption: steak and beef - never steer or cow; sausage, pork, bacon - not pig.
Still, quite inconsistently, we are capable of empathetic identification when a story such as Moo’s develops. Is this just a temporary lapse of civilized reason, a childlike indulgence in anthropomorphism? I think not. There is something more profound at stake, and at steak if you will.
“Those who become guilt-ridden about the productive beasts we cannot humanize feel a corresponding yearning to reconnect” with wild animal energies, historian Richard Bulliet has suggested.
I think Moo tapped into this desire of ours to rediscover some indomitable force that survives even our best efforts at control, that can’t be expunged even by the machine of exploitation to which farmed animals are routinely subjected.
Bulliet calls this paradoxical mind-set “post-domestic,” because it shows that we no longer accept the project of domestication wholeheartedly - we have now attached a touch of irony to it and thus become somewhat confused in our feelings and thoughts regarding the entire enterprise.
I would argue that such confusion is part of a larger conundrum that haunts late-modern civilization, namely that we live in the kind of society made possible economically through the subjugation of nature and other life forms, and yet we are troubled ethically by that very conquest of nonhuman being(s).
The predicament to which I refer is not new to humanity - it’s an old story, really: Domination breeds alienation in the master, which in turn makes him anxious and ambivalent about his underlings and himself.
Through technology and quite a bit of bravado if not outright hubris, humankind has cast itself in the role of biological lordship. It should not be surprising, then, if we suffer the psychological maladies endemic to that position.
So what are we post-domestic people to do?
There are two main options available: full-speed ahead with our program of biotechnical mastery and the mental pathologies that go with it - or else ease up, tread lightly on or with our fellow earthlings, and maybe the species-schizophrenia will evaporate.
Our reaction to Moo is a hint that the second alternative is probably worth a try.
Ralph R. Acampora is an associate professor of philosophy at Hofstra University.
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Excellent article regarding the steer. Only want to mention that English seems to be one of only languages that hides words like the ones you mention. German for example names meat as flesh. Thanks.
Poor little cow.
Now I’ll be short a few T-bones for my next BBQ.
Grow up people! There are HUMAN BEINGS suffering around you everywhere all the time.
Worry about your fellow man first, not dumb animals.
It is not the killing of cattle which, as is out here in ranch country, is often slaughtered by the rancher himself, after a time of the cow or bull having free range of the land and is thus fed in freedom on organic products. It is the factory farming we need to end!
Poor little Ted.
Now he’ll be short a few brain cells at the next BBQ.
Domesticated people miss a lot through misidentification. Human? What defines human? An apposing thumb? An appitite for another’s flesh? Technique?
I would propose that what we call Humanity is defined as ‘COMPASSION’.
I AM worried about my fellow man…especially those such as poor Ted, who fails to comprehend the MEAT of the article we are discussing here. Breaking free of our own Domestication, would be a large step in breaking free of an obscene delusional system;
which is the VERY SYSTEM causing the ’suffering of HUMAN BEINGS around us everywhere all the time’.
Snorky makes a very good point, it is as compassionate as it is true.
Folks there are many reasons to leave the meat behind. If you are ignorant and don’t care about animals here is another reason. The bottom line is if you keep eating animal products, you are going to develop heart disease and die early in life. If you wish to give your income to the meat industry and then down the road the prescription drug industry then by all means keep consuming animal products. But when the diagnosis comes that you have heart disease or cancer please don’t be surprised. Your lifestyle has dictated your death. Now for those of you who are intelligent enough and would like an answer on what to do, there is one. One you can do yourself. It is simple, change your diet. Go to your local grocery store, the larger the better for selection reasons and try meat free burgers and hot dogs. Once you get off the animal products you will be amazed at how good you feel. You won’t come down with the flu as much, your skin will clear up, allergies will go away and you will have a sense of well being you are missing. Once you are off meat for a few months and try going back to that diet you will see how bad you feel immediately. The economic resources it takes to grow cattle for consumption is staggering. We are depleting the planet. So whether you care about animals, your own health or a planet that is fit to live on, please consider making the change before you become a heart disease statistic. And for those of you tired of hearing the argument “Well I have to die from something” or I knew this guy who ate meat 3 times a day and smoked 2 packs a day and lived to be 95. Well there are exceptions to every rule. Do you think you’ll really be that exception? If those people had ate healthy and didn’t smoke maybe they could have even lived longer more enjoyable lives.
SPECIFIC REPLY FOR TED STEPHENS
In this comment Ted Stephens uses one of the most shopworn excuses (not to mention the inescapable sarcasm of self-righteous fools) for continuing to indulge in something that is definitely objectionable–from every rational and moral standpoint. The reasons why eating meat is wrong, not to say morally criminal, have been well argued and documented on many venues and require little elaboration here. But let’s take Stephens’ snide challenge at face value and follow his logic. This is what we’d get:
First, if Stephens, as he pretends, cared about PEOPLE, which, as a human supremacist he indisputably puts at the top of what he regards as an irrefutable position, he’d be concerned that raising cattle is one of the most inefficient ways of producing food, since a huge amount of gtrain and otehr foodstuffs have to be employed to generate 1 lb of meat.
Second, from a purely environmental standpoint, which I presume Stephens, in the name of consistency, must care about (since last time I checked the environment affected us all, people, too), is severely affected by all forms of animal meat production, especially under factory farming conditions. Cows are known to be enormous contributors of methane gas, one of the main culprits of global warming, and factory farming itself generates one of the most intractable streams of land and water pollution. In some Southern states such as the Carolinas, hog farms generate excrement lagoons whose presence can be smelled tens of miles away, and whose management is now regarded as one of the toughest challenges for the commonwealth.
Third, the Christian angle. I’m not a Christian, not in any formal sense, hence I belong to no church, although I could be defined as an unaffiliated unitarian/buddhist/quaker mix. But I do believe and practice, to the max, the teachings of Christ and other great moral teachers. They are all in agreement about one thing: SELFISHNESS IS EVIL. And compassion should be the defining characteristic of any well-developed human being and well constituted society. The categorical imperative to let kindness rule our actions paves the way for social justice, and a number of other badly needed but scarce social goods in this dog-eat-dog society that struts around claiming to be “Christian.” There’s little argument about that. Except that you seldom find such arguments in public forums because the entire apparatus of opinion and consciousness formation in this nation–from media to politicos and other pulpits– is devoted to covering up the criminal value system we worship under the so-called “freedom of the
individual.”
Fourth: Health. The notorious cardiovascular and obesity epidemic in this nation, with a cluster of associated diseases such as diabetes, cancers, etc., is strongly linked to the consumption of fats in meats, especially cow flesh. The morbidity caused by this indulgence costs people and the nation, billions and billions in health services and economic losses, and robs the nation of resources which might otherwise be allocated elsewhere. At the end of the day, we all end paying for this habit.
Lastly, anyone who cares to check out the history of ranching in this nation, especially over the last 65 years, will see a pronounced pattern of taxpayer abuse by ranching outfits who pay (when they pay) a fraction of the market price for grazing their cattle on public lands. The practice has reached scandalous dimensions, but since we have a simulacrum of democracy, not a real one, and semi-depopulated states like the Dakotas can send 2 senators each like the most populous states, these senators almost invariably being certifiable crooks, we get what we allow under this “democracy”: being rooked in broad daylight by people who will wave the flag and proclaim the inalienable right of the strong and the rich to screw everybody else in the name of “the American Way” and “free market fundamentalism.” Because of that, I’m sure that if Stephens will respond it will be with some variance of that bullshit.
I hold no great hopes that Stephens will ever see the light. But still, my suggestion is that he should do some soulsearching and some growing up–in a hurry.
You wackos are really unbelievable. Should we force all carnivores to stop killing their furry little forest mates? What idiocy! Yea, eating the flesh of domestic animals leads to an early grave, that’s why my father made 92, my grandfather 91, grandmother 93, in fact, my whole family is long lived. The only one who died prematurely was my younger brother, who felt like you fools and passed away at 43 from not enough protein in his diet, too low body fat, and too much heavy bench pressing. What a nation of sissified children we have become. I guarantee your grand parents would slap the crap out of you pansies.
What a freaking moron! Excuse my Polish but there’s no other way to put it about this “Henry 8″ dumbass, big machoman…oooooo I’m trembling in my boots.
Listen Henry 1/2, I’ve spent 15 years in the US military, and seen more ugly stuff than you’ll probably get to see if you lived 10 of your miserable useless lifetimes…and I can tell you this: I wish we had more people who really gave a damn, who cared, and exerted compassion in this rotten world. Kindness is a word you obviously got no clue about. You think that being tough “and realistic” is being heartless. You couldn’t be more mistaken.
Look at your argument. First of all, it’s all about me, and humans, and me, and humans. “We lived this long, bla bla bla bla and were all carnivores…bla bla.” The article, you moron, is about what we do to animals. That’s the first concern of the author in case you didn;t notice. And who except a nitwit like you can offer the world of nature, the rules of the jungle to serve as a model for human moral behavior? Obviously you’re not much more than an animal yourself, and by putting you at their level I’m sure I will be offending the poor animals.
I found Mr. Acampora’s article to be thoughtful and constructive. His point, and an excellent one, was gently advanced as a suggestion.
If it were not for Chick-fil-A and South Park I suspect many Americans might have trouble identifying just what sort of creature “Moo” was or what relationship it had to the local burger joint. While I disagree with the author’s judgement that red meat is bad for you, when raised on grass, cattle are an indefensibly wasteful source of animal protein though I suspect their contribution to greenhouse gases is a bit overblown. I grew up on a farm and, consequently, have a somewhat different perspective than many. I do not ever recall a yearning to reconnect with wild animal energies as Mr. Bulliet speculates.
I think all humans share a sympathy for the fate of most creatures wild and domestic that they don’t feel threatened by. If it were not for the matter of survival these same people would prefer to allow these creatures to live as they choose. Many Native Americans depended upon the great herds of buffalo that thrived in greater numbers upon the formerly verdant western plains, without farmers of any sort, than domestic cattle do today. The Indians recognized their spiritual relationship with the buffalo which they honored and worshiped for the buffalo’s contribution to their survival. A spiritual connection most of us fail to appreciate today. With our “modern” agricultural practices we have squandered the eons of accumulated solar energy the great plains have accumulated. Our inherited, deep, rich soils are scattered across the planet by the wind or washed into our oceans with the rain leaving only a pathetic remnant which produces anemic plants only with the addition of petrochemical fertilizers and deadly pesticides.
Any connection we may have had with the land has been abrogated by the giant agribusiness conglomerates who wreck their unsustainable havoc across the world in their battle to control life itself. The planet’s food and the seeds to reproduce it. Even these seeds are being genetically altered to enhance specific properties like resistance to RoundUp. These changes now appear to alter the whole resulting plant in ways that can be only guessed at. What long term effect these “frankenfoods” will have on humans is only now becoming apparent and the prospects are frightening.
It was not that long ago that individual states through local farmers provided the majority of vegetable, fruit, grain and animal staples which fed their populations. People canned and dried produce for winter and for lean times. Now our yellow squash comes from Peru, our beets from Israel our grapes from Argentina our apples from China. We have less than five days food in our local markets. Few Americans have any emergency reserves. Even a slight disruption in international shipping would plunge us into chaos.
It has abruptly gotten far worse. With the human induced global warming scam our demonic government is diverting our precious cropland from the production of food for people to production of biofuels with the preposterous rational that this will reduce dependence upon imported oil. Contrary to their purported intent they, at best, represent a substantial net loss of energy and they do not improve air quality. Already this lunacy has resulted in growing grain shortages as biofuel related commodity prices have skyrocketed. It will not be long before this suicidal practice results in growing starvation of third world populations. As one writer aptly stated, this is akin to raising your children for your own food.
Mr. Acampora’s second alternative, rather than being just “worth a try” is more like our last chance.