I am a Marxist and a materialist. Ideas and beliefs don’t arise ex nihilo. They emerge to fit the material reality in which they exist. What are the material realities that lead to carnism? I would argue that there are only two that matter:
- “I benefit from objectifying these animals.”
- “These animals are too weak to stop me from objectifying them.”
Boil away the justifications, strip away the decorum, and this is what you get. But what if that person enters a situation where they benefit from objectifying me? What if I’m too weak to stop them? What barrier prevents them from doing so? My intelligence? My capacity for suffering? Their empathy and goodwill? None of that saves cattle, or pigs, or chickens. Why would it save me? I’m not foolish enough to think I’m special.
And look, survival situations are one thing. If you kill and eat an animal because the alternative is starvation, you have decided that the animal’s life is worth less than your life. If someone decided that my life was worth less than their life, and a situation came up where they had to act on that decision, I wouldn’t begrudge it. I wouldn’t like it, I’d fight it, but I wouldn’t begrudge it. The thought of someone deciding my life is worth less than their pleasure, though? Turns my blood to fucking ice.
I disagree with this assertion, at least for a large swathe of carnists. Yes, a meaningful amount of carnists live in denial by saying animals can’t suffer or other excuses. But a good percentage are consciously well aware that animals suffer.
So I don’t think my comment does prove the point. I’m trying to say that the moral basis of “don’t needlessly kill beings that can suffer” is not the basis that many/most carnists are working with, but instead simply default to “don’t needlessly kill human beings”. And I think there’s significantly more reason and complexity behind the basis of “don’t kill human beings” (or animals, actually) than simply realising their capacity to suffer.