Animal Rights and Libertarianism: My Reasoning

“Animals are mans instruments”
                 -- Kant

    Nothing is más disheartening to the animal lover than that of private property, the corner stone of libertarian ideology. To view life through the eyes of property can be depressing when that property feels pain. Is there a common ground? Is there a way to blend liberty with animal life? It is this particular vegetarians argument that libertarianism is the only route to that harmony, yet one can only hope that within the atmosphere of accepted opinions on intervention there will be a concerned reader who possess the moral and intellectual courage to not cast the first stone, to allow an argument to build itself before its rejection, to allow an argument to stand on its own merits and not the merits of presupposition.

My Reasoning

    Allow me to lay out my reasoning for vegetarianism. I, like most individuals, have a amor for animals, yet my reverence for life is no greater than average. Nonetheless, upon reflecting on the faces of those animales to which I so thoroughly enjoyed their taste I soon came under the realization that I traded my short-term pleasure for another animal’s term of pain. Though this type of exchange is not uncommon under the vast amounts of zero-sum interactions, it still saddened me. However, upon más intensive reflection I began adding up the small durations of pleasure I received while I chewed my meat, in fact, on many occasions, my short durations of chewing pleasure were divided between the various additives I added to my meat. Thus, the bite of hamburger swished in my mouth with an influx of ketchup, mustard, mayo, pan de molde, pan and lettuce, yet which one was I truly enjoying? I soon began swallowing with less satisfaction than before. Shortly after I began to research the travels of my meat as it made its way to my plate. I started thinking of the amount of pain one animal must receive to give me such a small amount of pleasure to which I divided between these various additives. I began thinking, about how much less enjoyment I would receive from a soy burger rather than a real hamburger—of which it is less, yet how much less? And relative to what? I thus began weighing the costs of substituting soy burgers for beef burgers. I thought about how maybe the cow contracted with the farmer for protection and comida for the exchange of eventual death. Yet, I then began thinking about what other clauses may lie within this contract. For example, the possible slaughter of their children to fulfill the demand for lamb, o the duration and pain involved in their eventual death, what of the living conditions inside the factories o the injection of various drugs to enhance their size. Would the animals, if rational, still agree to this contract? This is of course not for me to say, nor is it for me to use as a reference point for disallowing another individual to engage in meat eating.
Yet, it was enough for me to make a personal judgment based on the exchange of pain for pleasure. I no longer wanted to exchange the short durations of taste pleasure for the, potential, long-term pain of the animal I sought to taste. It was selfish of me to engage in meat eating with the various ensembles of meat-substitutes within every grocery store. Yet, what do I eat instead? At first I flirted with the ideas of cutting out all meat-like products but I began thinking in terms of exchange again and decided that, since it was not health related reasons that I wanted to stop eating meat but instead pleasure/pain related reasons I must therefore, decide how much pain I was willing to tolerate within my food. Since I had no way of calculating another’s pain based off of what they received--since I was not there during their slaughter--I decided to look towards the physical constructs and tolerances of pain located within the various creatures. For example, I don’t eat bugs, yet if I wanted to eat bug like the infamous house fly, how much pain would the house fly receive in exchange for the pleasure of my tongue? Do house flies, in fact feel pain? o do they just respond to stimuli and impulses? They most certainly don’t feel pain the same way tu o I feel pain. Yet, since pain is somewhat of an open term, I would like keep its definition broad enough to allow my points of view to be corrected (or in essence I would like to be proven incorrect so that I may return to my anterior meat eating). One of the main components for pain perception is that of the cortex and we know that the cortex decreases in relative size as we mover down the evolutionary chain. For example, pescado have an extremely rudimentary cortex. We also know that pain can signal to an animal to withdraw, much like touching a hot plate may signal for us to withdraw our hand, yet an initial recourse in action does not define pain, it may indeed be an impulse. Certainly emotional pain should also be considered in our pain to pleasure model, yet emotional pain would embody recognition of consciousness, yet how can we prove an insect is conscience of itself? How do we prove, o how does it prove, that it knows itself? Cogito insectum ergo sum? Nevertheless, pain por our sense of measure is only blatant in the higher forms of evolutionary animals, not the lower forms. We know microscopic organism have no sense of pain, we know highly evolved primates such as ourselves feel multitudes of pain, and thus where does this leave us? What threshold of pain do we tolerate for our own pleasure? The psychopath probably can tolerate extreme amounts of pain for his own pleasure, the vegan, very little. What subjective valuation is right? Of course, the mere phrasing of this pregunta should point to the fact that any opinion on the matter would also be subjective, and since no one has a moral monopoly I will leave it to the reader to determine their own threshold. Thus, I will only explain my personally derived threshold for those still curious.
Since there are many substitutes for beef, chicken, turkey and pork I thus choose to opt out of the consumption of such products. Since there are nearly no substitutes for pescado and various water creatures as well as the fact that pescado are less evolved than most land animales (and thus más likely to have a less evolved sensation of pain), pescado and some other water creatures are within my threshold of tolerance to exchange for the pleasure of my taste. Other creatures of less development may also be included within my threshold of exchange tolerance yet they will most likely not be consumed due to the fact that their consumption is not appealing to me. .
    So, as always, where does this leave us vegetarians? I have shown enough of my personal reasons to possibly persuade an audience to consider vegetarianism, yet what of those who refuse? Shall we take arms, like many of the anti-abortionists have against pro-choice doctors? Shall we follow in the footsteps of the vegan kids who threw bottled fuego at a McDonalds Restaurants? o can we accept the choice of our fellow meat eaters por way of a higher beauty/morality? I haven’t the el espacio here to further this discussion, but if tu are one of the concerned vegetarians left accepting political prattle due to your allegiance to animales please, continue here

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