We’re sitting around the kitchen eating breakfast and listening to a Gary Francione podcast and started spinning ridiculous scenarios. The lone cow on a deserted grass island was the silliest.
Imagine you’re stranded on a pristine grass-covered island with plenty of fresh water. It’s been a couple weeks without a meal and you’re getting weaker by the day. Attempts to catch fish have been a complete failure and foraging was a total waste of calories. You’ve resigned yourself to the harsh reality that you’re going to starve to death and have some hard vegan choices to make?
Option 1) You eat the cow… You mourn the loss of your only companion and thank the gods for your good fortune of landing on Cow Island. Your belly is full for the first time in weeks, and you dry the bones and hide to make clothing and a simple shelter. And you use the dried salt accumulated on the beach rocks to preserve the meat.
After a month or so (you really don’t know because you’ve lost track of time), your food supply runs out, and quite frankly you’d rather starve than eat another bite of salt cow. You’re lonely as hell and don’t see the point of going on. You’re left with the unpleasant choice- a slow agonizing death from starvation, or drowning yourself in the ocean and possibly making a nice meal for a shark.
Option 2) You let the cow live… During your brief stay on Cow Island, you’ve had countless hours to observe your sole companion who seems to be perfectly adapted to life here. While she is thrilled to have your company, she’s not dependent on it. Little birds land on her back as she lazily grazes on miles of lush grass. Yes, you know how good she’d taste, and it just so happens you brought along your butcher’s knife and a bic lighter. But before you go insane with hunger, you make one last rational decision. You come to the conclusion that the cow can live out her days happily on the island with or without you. You on the other hand lack the ability to digest grass and will absolutely die of starvation whether or not you eat the cow. So you say goodbye to your bovine buddy and take that long swim into the sunset.
How does this apply to the real world? I’ll leave that to you to work out. I’m not quite willing to hit the water just yet, but sometimes I wonder if the animals we share the planet with would be better off without us… Of course they would, but that’s nature’s call to make I guess.
Wow, sad and beautiful. When I started reading, I thought you were going to attack the whole “deserted island” argument, where people invent an outlandish no-win scenario to help them feel better about their 100% optional bologna sandwich, but you went in a different direction entirely.
I’m really moved by your discouragement, here and in the title of your blog. It sounds like you might be feeling overwhelmed by the suffering in the world. Have you heard this vegan podcast, Taking It All In: http://www.compassionatecook.com/media/podcast-media/taking-it-all-in-2#.TvI95lYtqSo ?
The Buddhist teacher I listen to answered someone’s question about feeling helpless about far-away suffering, such as war and famine, and I think he probably mentioned speaking out against the problems, but what struck me most was his comment that that he tries to be the best person he can within his sphere of influence, with the faith that his actions, good or bad, will ripple away from him through others. I’ve seen this concept in action for myself, in so many different ways, every day.
Great advice, thank you. And I listened to the podcast and recalled hearing it not long ago with Andrea- very good.
Can’t say I’m competely discouraged. I am looking for and clinging to hope in all this. I started the blog as an outlet to help work out my thoughts and positions and to hopefully encounter like-minded souls along the way. And I do believe we can make a difference within our immediate scope of being. I also recognize my tendency to focus on the long-term big picture kind of stuff that can weigh a person down, especially since no solutions have presented themselves as of yet
I’ve just written a post on this. I had much of it already formed in my mind, but your blog helped me focus it. I’m not pretending to know all about how you feel, or that it is the answer to the world’s problems, just some ideas that have been bouncing around in my brain, and I didn’t want to clog up your comment forum with a long-winded reply. I have a tendency to windiness.
Peace. http://expandingcircle.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/the-echoes-of-our-actions/
I wonder if it would be in poor ‘taste’ to suggest that one could also eat the birds fluttering around the cow.
Seriously though, this thought experiment is quite useful. I think that taking a swim into the sunset is a kind of suicide and therefore a more laudable option is to deal with death by famine, since means, and not ends, are what determine the character of a moral action, and I accept the principle of double-effect. Of course in either option the cow is going to die eventually as well, and certainly cannot procreate – though perhaps one could imagine the cow having some meaningful existence by simply experiencing more pleasure than pain. This raises the question, though, of how to balance human life with animal life in principle. One could also imagine setting up the thought experiment where two human beings were on the island, one of them being you, and set the same scenario up to see what our moral intuitions reveal. Or perhaps one recently deceased human person and yourself – or one recently deceased cow and yourself. Is there a distinction between killing and murder? If morality depends on intentions instead of results then is it true to say “better two deaths than one murder”?
Perhaps it is just the curse of being a philosopher that I find these thought experiments extremely useful to help people come to terms more clearly and cogently with their views.
Why not milk her? She might not be bothered that much, if you do it nice and friendly, and as long as she’d be lactating you could keep each other company. Perhaps she would find it worth the trouble, don’t assume too quickly animals are uninterested in or even dislike humans.