(Beth Clifton collage)
by Karen Davis, Ph.D.
Founder & president,
United Poultry Concerns
“Without guilt improvement is drastically diminished.”
– Thomas Coates, Facebook comment, November 22, 2021
The fact that animals are suffering and dying for appetites that can be satisfied in many other ways makes some people, perhaps many, uncomfortable, though not necessarily because of guilt. People get annoyed that you’re bothering them, trying to curtail their freedom and uncover a guilt they may not feel or feel strongly enough, so that some end up feeling “guilty” because they don’t feel guilty, just vexed that they’re being victimized.
If animals are largely overlooked in the range of human endeavors, is it any wonder that their suffering is barely accorded human knowledge, and that it makes sense to speak of the “secret” and “hidden” suffering of animals?
Even so, many people regard pain and suffering as morally objectionable and would agree with the Reverend Dr. Humphry Primatt, who wrote in 1776, “Pain is Pain, whether it be inflicted on man or on beast; and the creature that suffers it, whether man or beast, being sensible of the misery of it whilst it lasts, suffers Evil.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Ecology of pain & suffering
Yet the idea that pain and suffering are evil per se is not always true. Pain can be constructive as well as debilitating. Pain that is degrading in one situation may be uplifting in another, as when a person suffers for the sake of a loved one or a worthwhile cause. Philosopher Jeff Sebo writes, for example, that “people often claim that traumatic events serve as catalysts for rational behavior, helping them to reprioritize their lives and focus on what is important. “
At the most basic level, pain is informative. Physical pain informs us biologically that we are injured or ill, while the pang of guilt informs us morally that we have done or are doing something wrong. Few would argue that a morally pain-free person is enviable simply because lacking a conscience is soothing and freedom from moral restraint is gratifying.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Not all pain is the same
The fact is, not all pain is the same. While it is true that pain is pain regardless of who suffers it, other considerations apply.
For instance, if I have to choose between suffering from cancer and suffering in a concentration camp, I will choose cancer. Why? Because cancer is not a sign of human character; it’s a malignant physical disease, not a malignant assertion of human will. Cancer is unfortunate, whereas a concentration camp is evil.
The contrast between human agency and random occurrence is important to counter the claim that it makes no difference whether a human or a nonhuman animal, say, starves to death from natural causes or as part of someone’s research; whether she or he suffers in the course of natural predation or in the machinery of somebody’s factory farm.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Pain has a context
Pain has a context. There are not only degrees and durations of pain; there are also causes and conditions. There may be motives and attitudes that enter into it that include a guilty, if unacknowledged, consciousness.
Clearly seen, each episode of pain reflects the environment that produced it. Images of animals undergoing vivisection and slaughter, Auschwitz inmates recounting their experience of being experimented on by Nazi doctors, the testimony of the doctors themselves, all show that there is a moral ecology of pain and suffering, as well as a natural ecology of misfortune, which may or may not overlap.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Pain is a symbol
Pain is a symbol in the sense of something that is a part of – that stands out from and illuminates – a larger reality. To talk meaningfully about pain, we must take into account the conditions in which it occurs, including whether those conditions are primarily moral – involving human attitudes, motives, and conduct – or natural, like a plague or an earthquake.
We will not then be confounded when someone dares to assert, as I once heard a researcher say at the National Institutes of Health concerning the head-bashing experiments that were being conducted on baboons at the University of Pennsylvania, that what “happens” to animals in laboratories isn’t so bad, because “life is full of suffering.” A guilt-free mind is indeed a great comfort.
By contrast, Thomas Coates, who is quoted at the beginning of this article, goes on to say in his Facebook comment, “There are a lot of things I used to do that were immoral. Guilt has continuously guided me to learn and improve. I’d hope that anyone watching this footage [of turkeys enduring massive cruelty on a turkey farm] will experience guilt and use it to make more educated and kinder decisions.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Can guilt constructively penetrate the wall?
Animal advocates struggle with how to get people to care enough about animals to do more than just passively agree that animals shouldn’t be made to suffer.
Speaking of activist efforts in China in words with global applicability, Mercy For Animals’ president, Leah Garcés, was recently quoted by journalist Marc Gunther in a Vox article entitled Why the future of animal welfare lies beyond the West: “I think we have to keep throwing spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. We have not cracked the code. Nobody has.”
Should the “spaghetti” we throw include an effort to induce consciousness of guilt in people who are in a position to make a positive difference for animals in their personal lives?
(Beth Clifton collage)
More to do with punishment than persuasion?
“Try forcing most Americans to consider the suffering of the animals they consume, and they will conclude . . . that the whole exercise has more to do with punishment than persuasion,” B.R. Myers wrote in The Atlantic in Hard to Swallow: The gourmet’s ongoing failure to think in moral terms (2007).
As for encouraging people to feel guilty about contributing without reasonable cause to the suffering and death of a fellow creature, I think guilt is an appropriate and even a necessary feeling to have toward one’s innocent victims, as long as it empowers rather than impairs the ability to think and act better as a result.
Karen Davis. (Karen Porreca photo)
Guilt can be motivating, along with pity and remorse, and the uplift of deciding to wash one’s hands of contributing further to an abuse, and in this way transform the guilt incurred when one behaved less mindfully.
Further reading: Moral Injury in Animal Advocates and Nonhuman Animals and the Commonality of Being Reduced to “Lesser Beings”.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
(Beth & Merritt Clifton)
KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl, including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia. Her latest book is For the Birds – From Exploitation to Liberation: Essays on Chickens, Turkeys, and Other Domesticated Fowl published by Lantern Publishing & Media.
Please donate to support our work:
https://www.animals24-7.org/donate/
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The superego and guilt–or their absence–are a consequence of the oedipal phase of human development
and occur very early in childhood. Outside interventions–such as psychoanalysis and life experiences–may influence these consequences–which can be an absence of guilt or too much guilt–but they often do not. You cannot make someone feel guilty even for the most horrendous behaviors. On some level animal advocates and especially vegan advocates recognize this. It is certainly an obvious truth after decades of videos and articles on say, animal agriculture, that have not resulted in the giving up of animal food products for huge numbers of people. Want to persuade someone to give up meat, dairy, and eggs?
Talk about how these products are known to cause cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, pollute the land, air,
and water, and are a major contributor to global warming. Trying to promote guilty feelings in people who are incapable of feeling this won’t get you far. It would be like talking to people who are blind and saying
“Can’t you see that?” No, they can’t. All the vegan foods that are now on the market are a reflection of the
recognition that only appealing to ethics has not moved the needle. Rather the creators of these products speak of their great taste, good price, and convenience. This appeals to all people but especially those with no or a weak superego.
While we may not be able to “make” someone feel guilty, conveying to them the cruelty caused by their actions can elicit feelings of guilt in those with a functioning conscience.
Many people have not paid attention to articles or videos on animal agriculture (or other forms of cruel animal exploitation) but many who have paid attention to them have been affected by them, including with feelings of guilt, and have reduced or eliminated their consumption of animal products.
Discussing the health and environmental problems caused by animal exploitation is all well and good, but the basic reason why people should be concerned about it is because it unfairly causes the victimized beings to suffer.
Many vegan foods are labeled as being “cruelty-free” or with other wording promoting the point that animals were not harmed or utilized for their creation because the marketers know that will be of interest to caring customers.
No, we can’t force anyone to feel guilty, and some people are incapable of it, but we would be remiss to not try to appeal to the consciences of those who have such capacity (i.e., most people). It can be very effective in regard to changing behavior that causes humans to suffer, so there’s no reason why it would also work in regard to nonhuman animal issues. It does!
I believe we are mistaken to argue that ethics has “not moved the needle” where people’s conscience and buying habits are concerned. While it is frustrating for animal advocates to see how recalcitrant society is toward “food” versus animals, the time it has taken to get this far, since the mid-1970s when Peter Singer’s ANIMAL LIBERATION was published, is short. I say this with a great deal of personal frustration with mainstream society.
Meanwhile, Mary Finelli is correct to point out the positive effect of ethical arguments on behalf of farmed animals in particular. We cannot abandon these animals under the assumption that revelations of animal suffering and abuse, together with revelations of animals’ intelligence and complex sensitivities, have failed. We have a moral obligation to the victims of our species to tell their stories, even as we encourage people also to choose plant-based, animal-free products for health, taste, and environmental reasons. Now is not the time (there never will be a time) when compassion and ethics – the animals themselves – don’t count. To believe so is to reject the whole idea of animal advocacy. Based on my own decades-long animal activism, I believe whole-heartedly in the power and obligation of animal advocacy.
For people who love and care deeply about animals as I do, ongoing cruelty toward animals and the suffering this causes always comes first before consideration of– in animal agriculture–the harm to health
and the environment that this industry causes. But it is always a good idea to keep one’s feet on the ground and recognize the reality of who people are. A person may have a “functioning conscience” but still have gaps in their superego. These gaps exist and often cannot be eliminated in spite of powerful appeals
to them in various forms of animal advocacy. Indeed, the classic book,– Hitler’s Willing Executioners–
Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust– by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen documents line by line the active participation of ordinary Germans in the brutality and slaughter of Jews and others. Many of these Germans had “functioning consciences” in many areas but not toward the Jews and others they chose
to kill. There is no question that some individuals have developed empathy toward animals as a result of videos of undercover investigations and articles. There are people in the animal rights movement who have become strong advocates for animals as a result of this emotional education in spite of previous years where they engaged in cruelty to animals. Some people do change. But what is needed is large
scale change–a change in the ways society treats animals. This has not happened. Animal agriculture,
vivisection, rodeos, hunting, etc. all continue and result in unbearable animal suffering. Appealing to the conscience of participants and supporters of animal cruelty has not brought about the necessary change to
help most animals–although some people have changed and some animals have been helped–but,
considering the scale of abuse, the numbers are small. Wishing that people primarily focus on animal suffering rather than the destructive health and environmental consequences of animal agriculture is a nice wish.
In a moral world, this would happen. But it is not a moral world. People’s ability to experience empathy and have values consistent with that empathy is extremely uneven and largely formed in early childhood–
although, again, some people do have the ability to grow and change. Focusing on the health and environmental factors in animal agriculture does not forget the suffering of animals. Rather it is a reality based tactic geared to take into account the people one is relating to–always an important consideration when relating to others.
Fundamentally, I share Irene Muschel’s view of human nature and its ethical limitations and prospects. Today I read a paper posted by Marc Bekoff that I highly recommend, titled “I Am Not an Animal”:
https://www.kimmela.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/I-Am-Not-an-Animal-white-paper-Nov-23-2021.pdf.
“I Am Not an Animal” analyzes humanity’s inveterately hostile and alienated attitude toward and treatment of other-than-human animals in terms of Ernest Becker’s book, The Denial of Death (1973). This scholarly paper is readable, thought-provoking, and engaging, not dryly academic. It is justifiably pessimistic if not exactly “hopeless,” based on the evidence and arguments represented by the authors.
Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns. http://www.upc-online.org
The vast majority of people follow the norms of their society, especially concerning emotion- and tradition- loaded realms such as food. As long as human culture is steeped in animal-based food and eating animals is considered the default thing to do, most people will continue finding ways to defend their habits and reasons not to care. After all, our entire society is based around consuming as much animal flesh as possible, all the while obscuring the process as much as possible.
But what is considered acceptable by most in society can and does change, sometimes rapidly, other times by tiny steps at a time. If food companies decide that they can produce protein more economically and efficiently than by raising billions of animals, then I think we’ll start seeing some very big shifts in society.