Vegetarianism on a National and Individual Scale

A recent article published on the Voice of America website revealed that there has been a sharp decrease in the amount of meat consumed in America in recent years, presumably due in part to the spread of vegetarianism. “For the first time on record, U.S. per-capita meat consumption has declined for four consecutive years, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The six percent drop between 2006 and 2010 is the largest sustained decline since recordkeeping began in 1970. (voanews.com)” The article admits that that change is most likely due in part to economic changes in the US, but suggests that it is also has something to do with vegetarians and ‘flexitarians.’ The article notes that there has been a rise in campaigns such as “Meatless Monday”, which is implemented at DePauw, as well as many other schools and organizations around the world. A major reason why more and more people are attempting to eliminate meat from their diets is because it can be unhealthy. Additionally, livestock, especially cattle, are terrible for the environment because they must be given a huge amount of water and grain every day to survive.

            In his article, Shafer-Landau argued that there is little or no reason for an individual to become a vegetarian, even if it is the ethically correct thing to do, because that individual’s contribution on its own would have no impact on the meat industry. Although it doesn’t prove that an individual can influence the meat industry on thir own, it does report that people who abstain from meat have collectively made a difference. Shafer-Landau agrees that this is true, but seems to be greatly underestimating the influence that one person can have on others. For example, the article mentioned Joe Yonan, the food editor for the New York Times, who received numerous letters of praise for his decision to stop eating meat. It seems likely that an influential person such as him could perhaps encourage others to convert as well. Even if someone isn’t as famous as Yonan, they still have some influence of their friends, who in turn influence their friends. There is certainly a possibility that one individual converting could lead to a snowball effect. Additionally, even just a few vegetarians in a small community can have a dramatic effect. In my fraternity, for example, only a small portion of the total house are vegetarians, but because of us, some of the food served for every meal is always meat-free. And since that food is bought locally, (usually from Krogers) it could potentially have a minute effect on the amount of meat products sold by that retailer, which just might be significant enough to eventually cause enough reduction of demand to prevent one or more animals from being hurt or killed, and that is reason enough for me.

Works Cited

Baragona, Steve. "As World Meat Consumption Grows, US Appetite Wanes." Voice of America [Washinton] 3 Apr. 2013: n. pag. Voice of America. Web. 23 Apr. 2013. <http://www.voanews.com/content/as_world_meat_consumption_grows_americas_appetite_wanes/1634222.html>.

The Limitations of Kant's Perspective

          In chapter eleven Russ Shafer-Landau summarizes, and then points out a fatal flaw of Immanuel Kant’s principle of universalizability. Kant was staunchly opposed to utilitarianism. The primary reason for this seems to be that he disagreed with the idea of consequentialism; rather he believed that the morality of an action was largely dependent on its maxim. A maxim, as Shafer-Landau describes it, is “what you are about to do, and why you are about to do it.” (Shafer-Landau 2010, 157-158) This view is perhaps more forgiving in a sense, because it forgives someone whose well-intentioned act produced harmful results. Also, unlike utilitarianism, Kant’s view saves people from having to consider every possible outcome of every decision they make. Kant’s criteria for whether or not an action is morally correct is that it must be universalizable. Kant outlined an easy test to determine if this is the case. First one has to determine their maxim, and imagine a hypothetical world in which everyone accepts and follows that same maxim. If that action could still be successfully carried out in a world where everyone else has the same goals, then that action is universalizible. (Shafer-Landau 2010, 159)

            The principle of universalizabity works well in matters of environmentalism. For example, consider someone who wanted to buy a Hummer. This would fail to pass Kant’s test of universalizabilty, because not everyone on earth could drive a Hummer, unless of course they built a Hummer that works underwater. Or if someone wanted to pollute the water because it was convenient, that would not be universalizable, since it would likely mean that there would be no clean water left, and everyone would die.

Unfortunately, as Shafer-Landau points out, this methodology only seems to address one specific type of immoral action: the kind that is self-serving, and acts as though the person committing the act was superior to others, or at least not bound by the same moral rules. This is neglecting several other genres of unethical actions, including but not limited to actions that seek to harm specific individuals or groups. (Shafer-Landau 2010, 165) I noticed that Kant’s principle would also not prevent systematic, wordwide immoral actions. For example, the maxim ‘I am going to murder people at random because I want to destroy all human life’ is easily universalizible. If everyone shared that maxim, they would need only to commit suicide, and the goal would be completed. However, random murder is pretty easily recognizable as an unethical act.

            Kant’s view, as Shafer-Landau points out, is narrow and idealistic. It fails to recognize the complexities of people’s motives. This is further shown by the fact that Kant praised integrity as being the most important virtue. (Shafer-Landau 2010, 165) This might be the case, if everyone had similar and universalizible intentions, which is obviously not the case. A white supremacist who staunchly adheres to their racist principles is still a white supremacist; if anything, their integrity in that case would make them worse. Kant seems to have an interesting idea of ethics, but one that is limited by his flawed view of human nature.

Works Cited

                    Landau, Russ. "Chapter 11-The Kantian Perspective-Fairness and Justice." In The Fundamentals of Ethics. Second ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 154-167.

The Balance of Emotions and Reason

The title of the lecture given by speaker and DePauw alum Joy Meeker was Facing Discomfort: Engaging Justice, which was particularly interesting, because many of the points that she brought up seemed somewhat unfamiliar or uncomfortable to me. Near the very beginning of the lecture, she mentioned an instance in which someone told her that they believed that the ideal mediator of a conflict would be Mr. Spock from the Star Trek series. I immediately agreed with this before she had a chance to say anything else. Who better to solve a problem than someone who is as impartial and unbiased as he is brilliant? But to my surprise, Meeker went on to say that this is a terrible attitude to have towards disagreement.

Meeker, much like Alison Jaggar, believed that emotions were not only an inevitable part of how we perceive and judge things, but also a beneficial one. We feel the emotions that we do because there are good reasons for us to feel them, and so they should not at all be separate from our decision making process. This is somewhat contrary to the mainstream, somewhat positivist view that emotions should be all but shut down and barred from taking part in any serious ethical decisions. Initially, that is the view that I had aligned myself with, but on further consideration, there may be far more to it than I had initially realized.

If I may go on a somewhat nerdy tangent and return to the earlier Star Trek example, the structure of the Enterprise's leadership is aligned with Jaggar and Meeker's ideas about the dual roles of emotion and logic. Out of the entire crew, Spock possesses probably the most intelligence  and definitely the most (literally) inhuman lack of strong emotions. However, perhaps for that very reason, Spock was not the one in charge of making decisions for the crew. Dr. McCoy was an officer of nearly equal rank as Spock, but with a very different style of decision making. He would usually let reason take a back seat to his strong emotions; and would often end up in trouble because of it. The captain of the Enterprise was James Kirk, who fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. He would use a combination of logic and reason to solve problems, relying on mediation from both Spock and McCoy. Because of this, he was able to overcome whatever obstacles he faced.

In Freudian terms, the three characters seem to represent the three parts of the psyche: the id, the ego and the super ego. To the best of my understanding, the id is responsible for our surface-level emotions, the super-ego is the strictly calculating part of the psyche, and the ego is responsible for mediating between the other two to make informed decisions. Meeker's ideas about decision making seem to represent this model: an even balance between logic and emotion to determine the best course of action.