February 21st, 2167
The New York Daily
There have been cries from locals in Healy, New York, about taking down the statue of Jerry Whittaker. Whittaker was renowned in his time for his breakthroughs in the field of oncology, with his discoveries saving an estimated five million lives.
For the past one hundred and thirty years, he has been the poster child of his hometown: Healy, New York. After his death in 2073, a statue was erected in his honor; however, at a recent town hall meeting Friday, his legacy has come into question.
A group of students at Heatherheight University in Healy have taken issue with the prominent display of an omnivore in the town center. They submitted a petition calling for the removal of the statue last week which prompted the town council to move ahead with setting a date, February 27th, for a vote on the future of the statue.
"The statue whitewashes the history of Whittaker. It was well known the horrors of the factory farming system in Whittaker's time yet he continued to engage in an omnivorous lifestyle. He once said that he considered moving away from meat consumption but then claimed, he would miss bacon and cheese a little too much, laughing about it with the interviewer. We want the statue removed. It makes no sense to celebrate someone who supported the genocide and torture of animal lives," said Michael, a third-year at Heatherheight, who spoke during the meeting in support of the removal.
Others disagree. Owner of Smith's Bakery on Lever street, John Gill said, "It's ridiculous. They try to cancel people for anything and everything these days. Back then, that kind of stuff was normal. We're going to have to take down every statue in the world if we continue down this road."
There are some who favor a middle of the road approach where the statue would be kept but a new paragraph be added to the description at the foot of the statue. It would explain some of the moral complexity of Whittaker's history. Alyson Regalia, librarian at Winchester explained, "We're just asking that this blindspot of Whittaker be included somewhere in the memorial to show that even noble people can engage in heinous acts. It's possible to honor his legacy while acknowledging even Whittaker had faults."
The fate of Whittaker's statue remains to be seen. All town council members have been quiet about how they will vote on the 27th.
But even if the statue remains up, the question of how to reconcile with the history of factory farming and the legacy of those who supported it remains an important one.
(Part 3 of 3, threaded because I want to discuss different things you bring up in different places.)
"You said you feel threatened by a piece like this which paints the current treatment of animals as something that will be viewed as horrific in the future and understand you may contribute in a small way to that? What do you make of the current treatment of animals in our society? (I'm very open to hearing your thoughts, even if they may be very different than my own)"
I appreciate it!
For clarification: I would not describe myself as "feeling threatened" in the sense of "my position is unstable," so much as I would say that I felt, as of the time I read the story some hours ago, as "threatened" in the sense that someone who was being subject to extortion might feel threatened; that is, threatened meaning having been made the subject of a threat. I do not rationally expect anyone is going to burn down my house - but that was the kind of reaction I had.
I do recognize that, as I eat meat and consume dairy products, I am engaging in a potential evil. My opinions on this are complicated, but I have not stopped doing so.
To begin with, I am a total-sum utilitarian; that is to say, I do not think the repugnant conclusion is repugnant. Creating people who would prefer to live is doing them a favor. Creating someone on condition he later die for you is ethical as long as he would agree that, yup, existing had totally been worth it, and as long as his life didn't cause enough suffering (in side effects) to counterbalance it. So for this reason, I default to non-vegetarianism.
There is still the 'factory farming is uniquely terrible' argument! I have a great deal of sympathy for this argument! However, I think the case is weaker than it seems.
First, I am not in fact convinced that animals have qualia? Like, that is kind of a weak argument, just multiply the probability that animals have qualia by the total sum of the utility conditional that they do and go on from there? But - we really don't understand where consciousness comes from or how it works and I don't really know that there's anything actually inside a chicken's skull capable of suffering. So I do want this point made before I go on with the second, more important one:
I believe in the hedonic treadmill; that is, that people vastly overestimate and underestimate how much their happiness will change based on predictable factors (see https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/23/the-price-of-glee-in-china/ for a recent extreme case). I know enough history to know that the past was really extremely horrifyingly terrible - and, yet, mass suicides are not a common feature of life at any period in history, even those periods where nobody believed in a morally-relevant afterlife. Mass suicides did still happen occasionally, but (a) only under really extreme circumstances and (b) by people who did not know about the hedonic treadmill. So while I have no doubt that factory farming is worse for animals than conventional farming (other than the doubt of whether or not the animals are morally relevant), the question of "is it literally worse than death" is a much harder one.
You could still argue that, even if these arguments were persuasive, I should avoid eating meat anyway, just on the off chance it's a moral catastrophe. My response to that really just is that I am uncomfortable around Pascal's Mugging arguments and while I feel that I should probably investigate them I don't feel that I am compelled to obey every request that goes "Change your behavior or be at fault for a moral catastrophe!" I feel that being shaped like that is bad, because then anyone can just extort you effortlessly. Low-probability arguments that might be important are going on a queue based on probability, where I investigate one at a time as I have time. Right now I'm trying to figure out which religion is true, if any. Next on the queue is a Serious Long-Term Investigation Of Animal Welfare, but I expect it will take a while to get there.
If you want me to unpack anything, I'm happy to do that! Alternatively speaking, if you'd like to provide me with material for my eventual investigation, I'd also be happy to add it to the list. But so far I don't have any specific plans for changes to my behavior.