(soft music)
- What is the moral principle underlying our approach
to the equality between human beings?
We think about equal rights and human rights
and we apply them consistently across human beings.
And the reason that we have a conception of human rights
is because we recognize that somebody's moral value
should not be dependent on morally irrelevant concepts
like race, and gender, and sexuality, and religion.
So what is it that gives us that?
Is our equal treatment of human beings
due to an equality within the human beings?
Of course not. Human beings aren't equal,
they're not the same.
We all have different skin colors, and cultures,
and proportions, and eye shapes,
and all sorts of things, right?
But to be anti-racist isn't to deny
that these differences exist.
To be anti-racist it's to say
that we recognize these differences, but we recognize
that they're not morally relevant differences.
Just as the anti-racist recognizes the difference
between the races but says
that it doesn't make any moral difference
to the way that we should consider them
in our ethical framework,
so does the refusal
to exploit animals entail
recognizing the differences that we share
with these animals,
but only taking them into account
when that actually morally relevant.
Find the trait that you think it is
that differentiates human being
from a non-human animal
that justifies the difference in treatment.
The logic would have to work as such:
you would have to find the trait,
the characteristic, that those non-human animals don't have
that if a human being were to also not have,
we would treat that human being like we treat the animal.
So let's say that the reason why we justified
torturing pigs is because they don't have a similar sense
of self-awareness that we do.
Okay, if that's your reason
then let's apply it consistently.
Take human being and take away their self-awareness
but they can still feel pain.
Take a severely disabled child
who just doesn't have the same self-awareness
or has the same level of self-awareness as a pig.
Are you okay with torturing them?
I would submit not.
I mean, maybe you do, but whichever you choose
you're either left with this repugnant conclusion
that we should carelessly torture the disabled,
or the elderly, or most vulnerable of our society.
Or if you go the other way,
you are left with the inconvenient conclusion
that animal exploitation has to end now
as a matter of principle.
Just as racism does, just as sexism does,
just as ableism does too.
You don't need to see them as equal,
that's the point that I'm trying to first get across to you.
It's not about pigs versus humans,
it's about pigs versus human taste buds.
And no serious moral analysis can really think
that those are even comparable.
If you refuse to partake in the exploitation
of non-human animals, your stomach, your fridge, your mind
and your ethics will have never felt cleaner.
If you turn down the offer of milk in your coffee
and aren't afraid to say why,
then your moral courage will betray a level of empathy
far exceeding most of those around you,
but exactly in line with what those beings
that we share this planet with deserve.
If you recognize your place in this world
not as the unrestricted owner of animals
but an animal yourself
who's will to live
and avoid suffering is mirrored in those
who populate the factory farms
you'll have no choice but to stop eating them
and their products.
Not because you begrudgingly feel
that you have to in order to accord
with your rational moral system.
But because if you spend even a moment thinking
about this seriously,
you'll want to. And you'll be a better person for it.
As Darwin movingly observes at the end
of The Origin of Species,
there is grandeur in this view of life,
recognizing our position in the animal kingdom
and how that should prescribe us to treat other animals too.
Don't consider it a problematic hurdle
and struggle to overcome, but the opportunity
to be part of the greatest social justice movement
that the world has ever known.
As Peter Singer asks, when history looks back
do you want to be counted among the oppressors
or among the liberators?
You've got to make that choice.
(soft music)
Does it get more basic in the consideration
of our ethical conduct than to suggest
that perhaps it's not a good idea
to cause unnecessary suffering where it could be avoided,
especially when the justification for this suffering
is as trivial as sensory pleasure?
Does it get more elementary than to oppose the torture
of innocent creatures?
The torture of innocent -
We don't justify torture -
We don't justify the torture of our enemies
even when we have a good reason to do it!
How can we possibly justify the torture
of innocent creatures for no other reason
than our own moral weakness?
And so you can ask all you like,
How dare I force my views on you?
Well, it's a good question,
but how about this: I'll cut you a deal, okay?
I'll stop shoving these
inconvenient moral considerations
down your throat, when you stop shoving the tortured corpses
of the innocent down the same hole.
I'll stop caging you into difficult conversations
when you stop paying for people to cage innocent beings
into factory farms.
I will stop preaching,
in other words, ladies and gentlemen,
about the torture of animals
when the torture ceases to exist!
I am sorry if you don't like it, I truly am.
But you're really gonna have to get used to it, okay?
I won't stop making people aware of what's going on,
and I won't pretend like your convenience is
a legitimate excuse for this moral crisis.
I will ruin the party every time.
Let me be clear about this:
if you do contribute
to this unnecessary industry that I hate -
I hate - what you're doing.
But I don't hate you.
I think highly enough of you
to suggest that you can do better.
All right? You have the capacity to reach the moral standard
that your intelligence prescribes.
You have the potential here to be a moral example,
Eevery one of whom makes it slightly easier
for the next person to follow in their footsteps.
Just ask yourself
on what other moral issue would you permit
the same excuses that we allow
on the issue of animal rights -
taste pleasure, convenience, and societal disruption -
on what other issues would we allow these kinds of responses
to even be taken seriously?
This isn't some kind of philosophical fancy,
or fun exercise in argumentation.
This is the single greatest moral emergency of our time.
Read yourself the superstition
of human exceptionalism,
of the myth of justified torture.
Future generations will define you morally