The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

Some very interesting points there, Tordels.

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On the question of rights I think that both sexes have a long way to go and that it might not be possible to have a uniform set of rights for anyone or any animal.

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Let me give my own personal situation as an example. I believe that, just like a rabbit or a cockle, I have the right to a home. I live in a council flat, which I believe is classified as 'social housing' for the poor or needy. I claim not one penny in support of any kind from the government as I know where benefit money really comes from and how toxic to society the DWP has become - you've all read my rants on this so I won't bore you further. Suffice to say that I refuse to engage with this fraudulent and criminal system any further. Irrespective of whether I am correct or incorrect in my assessment I believe it is my right to refuse to get involved with any activities I distrust or suspect to be unlawful.

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Living entirely without benefits is not easy but, luckily, an old boss of mine is able to throw me a bit of work here and there. This is not easy for me as I have several conditions which often make it difficult for me to even go outside and the pay's not much; usually between 30 and 100 pounds a week with some weeks creeping up to £200 and others returning bugger all.

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I have the right to a home and that right is recognised by the society I live in to such an extent that social housing was created to address that right. The local council, however, believes that its right to demand of me £80 per week is greater than my right to a home. I recognise the council's right to charge rent but I believe that charge must be reasonable and so have offered to pay it a fixed percentage of my income. The council will not even enter into discussions on the point, saying that my only options are to pay £80 a week myself, borrow £80 a week to pay them, get £80 a week off the government to pay them or get the Hell out and go live somewhere else. I have lived in this flat for 27 years - I don't want to live anywhere else and I have nowhere else to go. The council has applied to the "court" for a "possession order" and the "court" has granted it. It is the council's stated goal now to have me evicted. But I have the right to a home and I won't let it.

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Or am I incorrect? Sure, a rabbit has the right to dig burrows under a farmer's field but the farmer has the right to gas the rabbits and fill in the warren. Maybe the council's right to demand £80 a week is greater than my right to a home - I mean, I could always allow myself to be evicted and then build my own home out of old tyres and rubbish somewhere, right? If I can find a piece of land that isn't already "owned" to build it on and the council decides not to knock it down and haul it away to the tip.

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So rights appear to be fuzzy - I have the right to food, water, medicine and shelter; but only if I, or somebody, can pay for those rights. The right to an abortion is no right at all if you can't afford one. I think the question of rights might be a bit of a red herring - with the UK government trying to exempt itself from the European Human Rights Act the perception is that your rights are what the government tells you they are. There's that male concept of 'ownership' I was talking about; the elites think they 'own' your rights so completely that they can only be exercised with their consent (my own council's apparent attitude).

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To my mind, the issue of rights is a personal one. It is up to me to decide what my rights and responsibilities are and to do that in as balanced and responsible a way as possible. This of course means that everyone else (animals included) has that self same right to decide as I do - and the responsibility of facing up to the consequences.

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I believe that the concept of rights is pretty much inherent, most of us know what's right for us and what's not. In a way, and to a lesser extent, I think most animals do as well - although almost certainly not on a conscious level. 

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I think, therefore, that any attempt to codify human or even animal rights, never mind applying them, is almost doomed to fail from the start unless the whole issue can be simplified and boiled down to something as basic as "do unto others as you'd have others do unto you" and then to inform that with societal, historical and philosophical education rather than having a bunch of musty old judges write down a list of "one size fits all" human or animal rights.

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I must own my own rights and responsibilities, just as you must own yours. That might sound like a recipe for anarchy of the worst kind but I don't think so. On a personal level, most of us know that we have the right to kill other people to get what we want but the overwhelming majority of us also understand that we have the responsibility not to do that. It is only when the rights of others get codified that things seem to go awry - the right of Monsanto to control seeds, the right of the United Kingdom to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, the right of soldiers to kill, the right of a third party to decide whether a person can have an abortion or not, the right of the council to evict me.

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Okay - I think I just went way off topic there! In my defence, I'm just making this shit up as I go along, exploring this new (to me) idea that ownership, especially from the male perspective, may be our biggest problem - and our greatest opportunity.

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Either I own my rights or nobody does.

[TordelBack]

Leaving this meeting of the Middle Aged Wankers' Debating Society aside for one moment: bloody hell Mark, that's an awful situation.  Without wanting to suggest that you compromise your beliefs, I do think you might consider being the middleman of a simple transfer from one pocket of the state to another, simply to alleviate the stress.   I know to my cost that principles are at their most important when you're at the end of your rope, but even so mate...

Back on topic (although I'm not sure we left it), you're quite correct, rights are More Complicated Than That.  I was trying to set out a higher-level stall as a point of reference: we agree that humans have certain rights (unless, apparently, they are criminals, accused of a crime or just plain foreign-looking), so the issues are of applying these equally first, before digging down into the conflicts and subtilties below, which you provided such concrete examples of. Rights have to exist in some form before they can be in conflict.

Animal rights have still to even get to that starting point: the according of any rights to non-humans, or whether such a thing is even possible, is still very much in question. 

I'm also more than a bit leery of discussing feminism in the same conversation as animal rights, with the worrying possibility of anyone thinking that these things can be compared or conflated, although I see why you brought the two together in this instance (the two TV pieces and their comparison).

[The Legendary Shark]

Yes, yes! Absolutely! Thanks for that, Tordels - I am not lumping feminism and animal rights into the same category (even though I am a man)! 

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Thanks also for the support - it's much appreciated. I really don't think I can compromise, though - no matter how tempting and "sane" that might be. It would be so easy to give in, sit down and shut up - but how could I ever respect myself if I did? How could I ever post in this thread again? I'm sure I've said it before but sometimes I hate knowing what I think I know and believing what I think I believe. All I really want is to be left alone.

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There is wisdom in your words, Tordels, and I thank you for them, truly, but I can't heed your advice under current conditions. I have suggested to the council that if they cannot fulfil their social housing obligations due to poverty then they should apply to the government for some kind of "tenant benefit" to help them out. I even offered to write them a reference and to do all in my power to help them with their claim. The (by now exasperated into silence) council manager dealing with me has taken a particularly dim view of this offer.

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Sometimes being a geek helps. I have known for a long time that I can't win and this depressed me immensely until I suddenly remembered how Data defeated the Strategema Master. I don't have to win - all I need is a stalemate.

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My (quite possibly lunatic) attitude may provide a sort of answer to your point of how rights can be applied - by what agency. The blanket imposition of rights through such things as the courts would seem to be an unwieldy process containing many practical and ethical challenges. In my case, I am attempting to take control of, and take responsibility for, my own rights.

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Maybe the best way to ensure the equal application of human rights is to expect people to apply them themselves. Where conflicts occur, the courts then should step in on a case-by-case basis (which leads us into law, the justice system and another can of worms altogether!).

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That question of ownership again - I can own my rights but can I own the rights of another person? In some cases yes (I would be morally required to own the rights of my newborn child until it could begin to understand owning its own rights). In some cases, maybe as with an older child, a spouse, a charge or a business partner, ownership of rights is shared. In most cases I have absolutely no ownership over the rights of other people just as other people have no ownership over my rights.

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I don't know - does any of this make sense or should I just crack open the Scotch and put another Farscape DVD on?

[Tiplodocus]

The analogy I am working on for animal rights goes along the lines of:

A film needs a scene of a cow exploding. Even if it provided the most realistic and satisfying shot, everybody would think it completely immoral to blow up and kill a real cow to get the shot. Especially when there are so many ways to fake it; puppets, scale models, cgi etc.

So why do we allow this to happen for our eating habits?

Last time I checked I wasn't in the employ of Monsanto, I am just concerned about ethics. It does happen. Maybe the lawyer is too.

[The Legendary Shark]

What if the cow had BSE and its death would be utterly painless?

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Say I contracted a painful and incurable disease (God forbid), would it be immoral of me to offer to get myself willingly blown up to add verisimilitude to a film, the cash to go to my family?

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It's okay to pump the milk out of cows twice a day whether they like it or not, keep some of them constantly pregnant only to kill the newborn males for veal and eventually shoot them through the brain to eat them and make shoes out of them but it's wrong to blow a cow up painlessly for entertainment? Forgive me but I'm beginning to suspect that either each of the above is true or none of them are.

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Damn that lawyer and his persuasive arguments...

[Tiplodocus]

Go Vegan dude. Second best decision I ever made.

[The Legendary Shark]

As if I didn't have enough on my plate - now this!

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God sure does have a sense of humour, sending me all these moral crises at once...

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Say I contracted a painful and incurable disease (God forbid), would it be immoral of me to offer to get myself willingly blown up to add verisimilitude to a film, the cash to go to my family?

Are you talking about euthanasia or blowing yourself up? Both illegal, but immoral? If you're okay with it, I'm ok with it.

[TordelBack]

Do you need to 'own' your own rights?  Doesn't the concept of ownership imply the possibility of transfer or loss?  If something is intrinsic to a person can it be owned in that sense?

Asserting your rights is another thing, as is interpreting, weighing and expanding them.  I suspect that linking the two concepts runs the risk of denying rights to those that can't actively assert them.  Segue...

The double-think of humans' relationship with animals is an endless source of horror, as both Tips and Sharky illustrate - it's a case of humanity's terrible blindspot of 'what's far away doesn't concern me' writ large. I would (and have) stopped someone in the street for meting out the tiniest fraction of the cruelty to an animal that I endorse and ignore every time I fancy a BLT.

Obviously the elimination of the suffering of farm animals, and the resultant environmental benefits, is an intriguing goal - but I find it hard to commit to this kind of absolute prescription. To live in this world in any form is to die, to eat and be eaten, but I agree, that doesn't mean we as beings capable of reason and reflective morality should ignore our responsibilities.  I think I'd settle for a huge reduction in the quantity of animals farmed, and an increase in the quality of their lives and deaths. 

Once (if) that has been achieved, it would be time to look at what should happen next.  One of the problems I have with getting my head around veganism is its inevitable reduction of the whole spectrum of farmed animals to a handful of zoo exhibits.  In their present form these animals are largely human creations, and have no sustainable place or role without our constant management or predation.  It's hard to imagine what the world would look like without them, but that on its own may not be a reason to perpetuate the current system.

[Jim_Campbell]

Once (if) that has been achieved, it would be time to look at what should happen next.  One of the problems I have with getting my head around veganism is it's inevitable reduction of the whole spectrum of farmed animals to a handful of zoo exhibits.  In their present form these animals are largely human creations, and have no sustainable place or role without our constant management or predation.

I have had several hilarious conversations with militant vegetarians/vegans who simply have no answer to the question: "If you could wave a magic wand and eliminate the eating of meat overnight, what happens to the pigs?"

Like you, I don't argue for the status quo. Were it in my power to wave a magic wand, I'd institute a draconian policy of world-beating animal welfare standards for farmed animals and insist that all imported meat must be provably produced to the same standards.*

This usually prompts wails of protest that this would make meat very expensive. Good. We eat too much meat, and we waste far too much of what we buy. In my scenario, we address the health and waste implications and instantly give a massive boost to the depressed rural economy.

(I know people who buy a supermarket battery-farmed chicken, carve the breast meat for Sunday roast and throw the rest of it away. Fuck that. We buy a chicken for Sunday roast, then we get sandwiches, then we get a curry off scratty bits that remain, then we boil the bones for stock and make soup.)

Cheers

Jim

*Exception: we're within sight of commercially viable lab-grown meat. I have no objection to lab-grown cow muscle being minced up for Tesco Value Lasagne.

[Dudley]

I have had several hilarious conversations with militant vegetarians/vegans who simply have no answer to the question: "If you could wave a magic wand and eliminate the eating of meat overnight, what happens to the pigs?"

To be fair, it's a weird question.  If you could wave a magic wand and eliminate all sexism overnight, what would happen to all the people whose jobs relate to combating sexism?  Answer: it's not going to happen, so it's completely irrelevant to the discussion...

[Jim_Campbell]

To be fair, it's a weird question.  If you could wave a magic wand and eliminate all sexism overnight, what would happen to all the people whose jobs relate to combating sexism?  Answer: it's not going to happen, so it's completely irrelevant to the discussion...

Nonsense. It's a completely fair question. If someone is going to give me a hard time about eating meat, to make it very clear that in their ideal world no one would eat meat, then they need to have an answer to the question: "What happens to the pigs?"

Cheers

Jim

[TordelBack]

Leaving aside the magic wand, and broadening out the question to include the less-tasty livestock, it becomes a whole raft of good questions.  Looking out the window, what happens to grassland and marginal countryside parts of which have been grazed for many thousands of years?  How do we get wool without the castration or slaughter of tups?   WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHEESE.

None of this is to say that the bad would outweigh the good (there's a lot of good), but livestock management has been a key part of our 10,000-year journey from 5 million folks to 7.2 billion, and there are implications for abandoning it that are well worth considering.  I don't however advocate staying where we are now: something has to change, but as always taking absolute positions tend to turn discussion into entrenchment and name-calling.

[Dudley]

Nonsense. It's a completely fair question. If someone is going to give me a hard time about eating meat, to make it very clear that in their ideal world no one would eat meat, then they need to have an answer to the question: "What happens to the pigs?"

Cheers

Jim

Two options:

1) We transition gradually to my ideal world, in which case demand for pigflesh drops and pigs are gradually not bred any more, or
2) I have a magic wand!  I'll feed the pigs in comfort until they die of natural causes!

[Jim_Campbell]

1) We transition gradually to my ideal world, in which case demand for pigflesh drops and pigs are gradually not bred any more

As Tordel notes, this takes a somewhat simplistic view of man's relationship with the livestock and the land. You're also advocating the planned extinction of a significant number species, which seems odd if you're advocating it from an animal welfare position.

Cheers

Jim