To people who know me, it would come as a big shock to hear that I am even entertaining the idea of becoming a vegetarian, but that’s my aim for 2009. No, I haven't been swayed by the nude antics of the PETA protesters, and I'm not trying to be stylish or trendy. I'm not even doing it for health reasons. From a health point of view there is really nothing wrong with eating lean meat. According to Steven Pinker in How the Mind Works, "though plant foods supply calories and other nutrients, meat is a complete protein containing all twenty amino acids, and provides energy-rich fat and indispensable fatty acids". And humans have a long history of eating meat; analysis of the bones of early humans reveals that lean meat was their main source of sustenance. To explain the reason for my decision, I need to briefly discuss the concept of morality and how I apply it to the animal world.
Early this year, I watched a 2006 episode of Doctor Who called “The Age of Steel”. In the episode, a mad entrepreneur named Lumic planned to convert humanity into a race of cybermen – with Lumic as their leader. Cybermen are humanoid beings, have metal skins, and walk around like heavy robots. They speak with monotone robot-like voices and – most importantly – experience no emotions or feelings (thus making them more efficient killing machines): they don’t experience fear, guilt, love, joy, embarrassment, sympathy – none of the feelings and emotions that make us human. In fact such emotions are not exclusively human, but the episode made me wonder: how would our planet have evolved if humans were deprived of emotions?
In a world without emotions, there would be no ethical standards; there would be no altruism, no kindness when it is deserved, no punishment when it is deserved, and no sense of guilt or embarrassment. Knowing that our neighbours experience the same feelings and emotions that we do means that humans have gradually had to develop moral and ethical principles that promote cooperative behaviour. In fact, I believe that this is why humans have invented deities and religions – e.g. an authority to validate and enforce these ethical principles. Many religious people wonder how humans can be “good” without religion. They insist that, without religious guidance, we impure humans would have no incentive to be good. This would be the case if we had never developed emotions. Presumably, in the Doctor Who episode, if the Doctor had not thwarted him, Lumic would somehow have wielded a godlike authority and enforced rules and regulations on the cybermen so that a cyberman society would probably function as he planned ... at least for a while. But Lumic was a product of human evolution. Humans have evolved a moral sense, and it is due to our inbuilt feelings and emotions (The Origin of Virtue by Matt Ridley discusses the Darwinian origin of morality in a very clear manner). I believe that humanity would never have developed ethical rules and morality, and it would never have progressed to its current dominance, had we been deprived of feelings and emotions.
However, morality is not hardwired into our DNA; human effort ensures that it is ever-changing. For example, during biblical times, it was okay to own slaves – but today it is morally repugnant; barely half a century ago, black people in the U.S were treated like animals, but today they have the exact same rights as white people; today women in Western society have the identical rights as men, but this was not always the case.
One day, perhaps the ever-increasing circle of morality will also encompass parts of the animal kingdom. I believe that some animals experience feelings such as empathy, sadness, joy, and even guilt ... any dog-owner (especially my friend Fiona) would attest to that. I wonder how many other members of the animal kingdom have such feelings ... and if they do, how can we humans mistreat them and eat them? In 2008, I attempted to become a vegetarian but it seems I didn’t do it properly as I developed some minor health problems as a result. In 2009, I’ll do it properly.
