Animal Respect

Animal Respect

The modern animal rights movement is now over half a century old. Someone should write a history of it. I will venture some alternative history. I was in on it from the beginning, but not at the very beginning. That can be traced to the book Animals, Men, and Morals, edited by John Harris and Rosalind and Stanley Godlovitch, published in 1971 (followed a few years later by Peter Singer’s influential Animal Liberation).[1] I thought at the time that the arguments (and facts) there proffered would be soon adopted by philosophers and interested others. But they encountered resistance from an array of moral philosophers and had to fight for recognition. This was disappointing for us activists. Still, some progress was made, but more slowly than was hoped and expected. What was once regarded as eccentric, even barmy, gradually became mainstream and respected—that was something, given the prevailing attitudes in those early days (the word “vegan” was unknown back then). But suppose things had gone differently: suppose much greater progress had been made, and large sections of the population had got the message. Let’s imagine that in a few short years the majority of people had seen the light: meat consumption was way down, there were vegetarian restaurants everywhere, fashionable people wore Animal Liberation T-shirts, etc. The arguments were so strong, so clear, so unanswerable, that most people went along with them, acting accordingly. But suppose a minority of people refused to join the majority—they stubbornly clung to the old ways. Suppose this minority were geographically separated from the majority—the north of England compared to the south, say. By this time the issue had gone political: politicians campaigned on a platform of animal rights, or animal non-rights. You were either pro-animal or anti-animal. Things could get heated, tempers flared, the country was polarized. The government, duly elected, tried to impose new laws regarding animals, outlawing the practices of the north (e.g., factory farming). There was talk of making meat-eating illegal. The minority were being pressured to conform, and they didn’t like it (they were morally wrong, but politics is another matter). Suppose they put up armed resistance and even intensified their animal abuse (as it was seen in the south). There was a danger of civil war; already there was a fair amount of violence and social unrest. Families were split, friendships shattered. There might even be a civil war fought over the issue, with mass casualties. It might have spread to other countries. This could all have happened, if the original architects had got their way—remember that, according to them, our treatment of animals is an atrocity, comparable to other historical atrocities. The result might have been victory for the abolitionists and an ethical society where animals are concerned. What if all the philosophers, along with other intellectuals, had been persuaded by the animal liberationists, and that this had accelerated the spread of the new ideas? To many of us at the time it was surprising that this didn’t happen—because a lot of otherwise sensible people were simply not having it. To them animals had no rights, no moral standing, were made to suit our human purposes (the animals should be glad of factory farms, or else they wouldn’t exist at all!). It seems historically contingent that the scenario I sketched didn’t occur—all-out civil war. For people are apt to be vehement on the question and refuse to budge—the arguments I have had!

What did happen was different—a kind of slow diffusion. Steady progress, piecemeal reform, a general raising of consciousness. In my lifetime there has been a transformation on the issue. It is amazing now to a find a vegetarian section in the supermarket. Perhaps we are lucky that more people didn’t instantly convert back in the early days, or else a societal split might have been the result. Moral progress is apt to be slow and that may not be a bad thing all things considered. It takes time for the human mind to adjust, for the moral truth to sink in. The Animalist Revolution never occurred, so we were spared its potential convulsions. Yet progress was made and no doubt will continue to be made. What if artificial meat becomes more widely accepted, tastier, cheaper, healthier, less environmentally damaging than natural meat? Then we might see a gradual phasing out. We will have a de facto victory of the ethical over the unethical. Compare the issue of slavery: suppose opposition to it had never reached the critical mass necessary to triggering the Civil War, so that that war never occurred, with consequences still visible today. Suppose instead that slavery simply withered away as technology developed, people grew more enlightened through education, etc. It would take longer to achieve the right result, but at least we would be spared the violence of a full-on civil war. This is speculation, of course, but you see my point: in the case of animal rights, we never got a civil war over the issue, but we could have. Wars have been fought over less. Historical change has not (hitherto) required anything so disruptive or deadly. I don’t doubt that if animals were capable of joining humans in bringing about better treatment, we would have had something like a civil war, because the issue is polarizing. Actually, great progress has been made in the ethical treatment of animals since (say) the nineteenth century, thanks to an enlightened few (the myopic majority will always be with us, regrettably). Overall, I’m quite pleased with the way things are turning out for animals, compared to the bad old days—though I would be the first to agree that progress is painfully slow and halting.[2]

[1] I am not counting such works as Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1912), the greatest animal rights book ever written.

[2] Enough time has passed for there now to be many second-generation vegetarians (I met one the other day) for whom an enlightened attitude towards animals is second-nature; these people are the ones to look out for. Times do change.