Singer

Once again, we return to the Holocaust comparison. And once again, I have no idea how to react. This is such a charged and complicated analogy. Originally, my argument was that the comparison was insulting and degrading to the cultural group it references, namely the Jewish population. However, that doesn't necessarily hold up when the man making the argument is, at least culturally speaking, a Jew. "we do to God's creatures what the Nazis did to us."(Anthology 300) Us, not them. The fact that a Singer can make this claim signifies not that the analogy compares Jews to animals, but that it compares animals to humans.  Most people are made very uncomfortable by this comparison. I myself, having grown up in a conservatively religious community, was always taught that animals were beneath us. They might be cute, but they were still put on this earth for our benefit. The Bible taught us this. Within this context, to the devoutly religious person it would seem blasphemous to believe otherwise. "Man may not be more compassionate than the Almighty, the Source of all compassion." (Anthology 322) However, I would remind anyone who takes the Bibles words at face value that it was written by humans, for human benefit. People naturally would not want to condemn a practice they found necessary. So personally, I think this is complete bullshit. "I asked myself why should God, the Creator of all men and all creatures, enjoy these horrors? . . . "They too have souls, they too are God's children." (Anthology 300, 309) In this way, the holocaust comparison is no longer insulting to humans, but it does shed light on our views of animal inferiority, that we would consider a comparison of us to them insulting. Life is life, and should be respected. I personally believe that God intended this. And whether you are religious, or not, no one should blind themselves to suffering, or think themselves superior and therefore allowed. That is the true measure of this analogy: that "might is right" is a despicable sentiment.

however. my issue is not with the comparison itself, or how well it holds up to scrutiny. For all intents and purposes, the violence committed on the Jewish population during the Holocaust (arguably for all of history), and the truth of "Might is right", is the most closely related situation to the current meat industry that we have at our disposal. However, the fact remains that it is inflammatory.  I agree with Bee's argument wholeheartedly: that a successful debate is created through the unemotional exchange of ideas, rather than insults (even if they're unintentional). No one wants to be told that they are a Nazi. There is no possible way to hold a coherent or productive argument after this comparison is made, because it would make anyone naturally defensive. Therefore, there has to be a better way to make others understand that animals are being tortured and that it should be stopped. In practice, I cannot honestly tell you what I think this would accomplish. I doubt everyone would stop eating meat altogether, Frankly, nor would I if I could kill the meat myself, in a more humane way (I won't go into all that). But perhaps some stricter legislation could be passed. Perhaps we could return to a more local form of subsistence. But the avenue by which this is accomplished is not through a comparison to the Holocaust. Unless a person is already receptive to the argument, it will just piss them off. I hope one day everyone experiences that "momentous intellectual breakthrough of recognizing the species barrier as morally or rationally untenable." (Anthology 316) But it's probably a long way off, and this isn't how we get there.