From: altar@beaufort.sfu.ca (Ted Wayn Altar)
Subject: Re: Dairy farming (was nice cows)
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 22:36:04 GMT


Russel (eerbl@cc.newcastle.edu.au) writes:

[...]
>I mean no disrespect for dairy farmers. Hell, most of my neighbours are cattle
>farmers of one sort or another. The problem is that they don't understand and
>cannot let themselves fully empathise with the animals they treat as objects of
>commerce. There is something else that I find interesting. Its the phenomenom
>of the "pet" cow. Almost every dairy farm I know has a "special" cow. Perhaps
>Ted would like to comment on the psychology of this?



    This is very interesting observation of yours.    What are to
make of this strange "affection" where instead of the usual
"distancing" of the cows by the rancher -- these soon to be
slaughterhouse victims -- we instead have something of the
opposite.  Although maybe not highly prevalent, still, why any
agreeable preferences attached to individual cows soon to be
slaughtered?  I'm afraid that I don't have a single nor a simple
answer.  Since human action is usually "multidetermined", there
is therefore no one answer to your question.  I hope you will
bear with me as I attempt to provide partial answer(s) to your
good question, one or all of which may apply to any given
individual case.  And of course, I can't claim an exhaustive list
of possible explanations.


THE COGNITIVE PROCLIVITY TO MAKE PREFERENCES:

One explanation to maybe consider is that of the natural
proclivity of human beings to differentiate and evaluate the
world, even if the analysis is completely arbitrary or bootless.
For instance, you can randomly assign people to arbitrary groups
and immediately with no other social interaction with, or
knowledge of, their fellow members other than the mere fact that
they were randomly placed in the same group, individuals develop
a preference for the other members of their own "group" over
those members of the other groups.  The need to differentiate and
place evaluative judgements on those differentiations is indeed
pervasive and automatic.

Our rancher, then, would be expected to distinguish and evaluate
members of his herd of cow.  What is interesting is how he/she
would choose to do so.  If it is simply in terms of yardsticks of
"good" beef, then I guess this is to be expected.  Olde Ben who
is the largest heifer is to be prized for his breeding potential.

But I guess you are suggesting that other categories of
preference develop, like that of dear Bessy being a "good" or
"nice" or even "beautiful" cow.  Such aesthetic and even
personified affections do seem odd coming from a rancher who will
soon be shipping dear Bessy to the abattoir.

There is an interesting book that might cast some light on this
curious phenomena:

        Sabini and Silver (1982) Moralities of everyday life.
            Oxford: Oxford U. Press.
        
In particular, see chapter 4, which is titled:

        Chpt. 4: "On destroying the innocent with a clear
            conscience: A sociopsychology of the Holocaust"
        
Some of the ideas here being drawn upon to explain the
inexplicable brutality and human evil of the Holocaust could also
be used for our example of where instead of the usual
"distancing" by the rancher of his soon to be slaughterhouse
victims, we instead have something of the opposite.



TECHNICAL VS MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

Cattlemen, if asked if they accept responsibility for sending
their cows to slaughter would probably say "yes", even if some of
those cows were "favorites" of theirs.  How is this possible?
Well, we should keep in mind that while responsibility is
something we have, it is NOT like our "having" of a piece of
property that can be borrowed, shared or disowned.  Rather:

    Responsibility "is related to the PROPER allocation of moral
    praise and blame"
    
What does this mean?  Well, it means for one that to say that our
cattlemen do not feel responsibility simply begs the question.
For example, if a person loosens his shoe because he feels a rock
when in fact there is no rock, the imagined rock would explain
the shoe-loosening action but not why he should in the first
place, feel something that was not the case.  How then, could our
cattlemen acknowledge "responsibility" but not be moved to save
at least their beloved "favorites"?  How can they say that they
are "responsible" but not act in a "responsible" manner
commensurate with those feelings of "preference" and even fond
attachment?

Here we need to maybe consider the different kinds of assumed
"responsibility" that occurs in, say a bureaucracy or in our
societal roles.  In contrast to PERSONAL or MORAL RESPONSIBILITY,
this "TECHNICAL" RESPONSIBILITY is divided accorded to work
functions (in a bureaucracy we have executives devising and
planning a job, subordinates for executing the planned project).
Such PARTITIONED technical responsibility is decided by and
contained within our institutions, whether they be only a
specific workplace bureaucracy or the larger institutions of our
society or cultural at large.  Hence, our questions of "moral"
responsibility here simply do not arise until, maybe, we begin to
judge those institutions as illegitimate or obsolete to what
might be our new shared morality of animal rights.  For the
cattleman, our questions of moral responsibility simply do not
arise nor are they needed for the job.  What is needed is merely
a minimal sense of "technical responsibility".  Hence, it becomes
understandable why they can say, "yes, I'm responsible for having
sent dear Bessy to slaughterhouse", simply because "technical"
and not moral responsibility is all that is really being
acknowledged.



FALLACY OF DIMINISHING RESPONSIBILITY WITH DIMINISHING INTENT.

The close link between responsibility and intent permits us to
feel responsible ONLY for what we do intentionally and not for
what appears "accidental", "taken for granted" or simply
incidental to our avowed and immediate goals.  Thus, our
cattleman can, I think, easily disown certain unpleasant
consequences of his/her actions since these "down-the-line"
actions are not part of his immediate goal or intent.  His/her
job is to breed and raise cattle, it is the men/women in the
slaugherhouse who kill them and it is society as such that
sanctions meat-eating.  Our cattleman did not intend the
particular organization of our society and culture where killing
cows is deemed "necessary" and acceptable.

Lest we forget, however, I do think that we are responsible for
all that we DO, not only what we may directly intend.  The drunk
driver did not intend to kill the child crossing the street, but
it is proper to nevertheless hold him/her responsible for what
they have done.  Hence, neither a lack of evil intent, nor even
the presence of a virtuous intent gone awry, is an adequate
excuse should we "knowingly" produce harm or unduly risk harm as
a consequence of our actions.


CONSCIENCE AND DESIRE

The commonsense view, and I think there is much to it, of a moral
dilemma is that it involves a conflict between inner desire and
the dictates of conscience.  The content of conscience is thought
of as "objective" or external in the sense of being beyond
individual whims, desires, interests and moods.  While desire is
something we have.  Right and wrong is something we say we "know"
or "perceive" as if it were an EXTERNAL OBJECT.

Our cattlemen, however, may simply be reversing the relationship
between inner desire and external principles.  Their sending
their cows to slaughter is not perceived as stemming from their
desires, but as something that is an objective fact about being a
rancher in a meat-eating society.

The desire of the cattleman to make a profit out of raising and
killing sentient animals that they themselves can even attach
some affection towards, is simply not questioned because it is
not seen as an personal desire but only as an external sanctioned
duty.  Like the excuse, "I was only following orders", we have
something like, "I'm only doing what has always been done, is
done elsewhere and will contine to be practiced".

Hence, the moral dilemma then becomes not one of sending the dear
cows to slaughter but in rebelling against society.  That is why
maybe vegetarianism is seen by some as something "extreme" or
"radical".  Maybe it is, in these terms, since here a central
premise of our culture is being questioned.  But this, in the
end, is a disownment of our individual responsibility to always
examine and question our individual desires.


ENTRAPMENT

I is probably not quite correct to see our cattlemen as
"deciding" to raise and kill animals for a living.  As do we all,
our cattlemen have arrived at what they do though "A PROCESS OF
ESCALATING COMMITMENTS".  People become trapped, often
unknowingly and even with complete indifference, by their initial
commitments.  The cattleman learns his profession by degrees over
time as he "grows up" to become a rancher.


DISTANCE

While we started off with your enigma of a breach of distance by
our rancher developing "favorites", there is still a large domain
of "distance" remaining in our rancher.  This distance is created
and strongly sanctioned by our culture.  After all, they are just
"dumb animals" aren't they?  This, I think, is still a key factor
in our cultural and individual "moral drift" towards the kinds of
brutality of live animals that we so readily tolerate and even
condone.  We enter the world as children already assuming that
the existing institutions and cultural practices are "good" and
well-justified.  Such a working hypothesis is proper for children
but as adults it then becomes of us begin to question what we
formerly merely took for granted.  Only in this way can we come
to understand and question the fact that we live as working
members of a society that has set up situations and institutions
designed to degrade and exploit the living non-human animal.

							Happy Vegetarian New Year,
								ted



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