That said, it can be argued that human pain differs from animal pain by an order of magnitude.
The only way animal pain and human pain differ are because we cannot communicate with animals. But we feel through emotions and expressions. Animals and humans do not differ that much when it comes to pain.
Giving up our speciesism will bring us to a moral cliff from which we may not be prepared to jump, even when logic is pushing us.
This would be a good finishing line, it's powerful and it leaves me with hope for animals in the future.
Animals kill one another all the time. Why treat animals more ethically than they treat one another?
This how animals are raised. To survive, I'm sure if they could speak actual words there would be higher expectations for them when it comes to threats and food.
I didn’t think I minded being a speciesist, but could it be, as several of these writers suggest, that we will someday come to regard speciesism as an evil comparable to racism?
It's definitely an issue that is getting discussed more than it would be just a couple years ago. Especially with climate change and the environment getting more attention, animals have been getting more news attention.
Treblinka
It was a Nazi concentration camp in central Poland northeast of Warsaw. Between 700,000-900,000 Jews died in this camp during World War II.
Even though these people cannot reciprocate our moral attentions, we nevertheless include them in the circle of our moral consideration.
Even though they do not have the same opinions, they are letting go of the differences and only spreading positive energy.
“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
The main idea of the article.
The disappearance of animals from our lives has opened a space in which there’s no reality check, either on the sentiment or the brutality.
The lack of wildlife to human connection we have now is little to none. People do not realize the damage they do when they order a burger or a fur coat. It is just a materialistic game to them.
Except for our pets, real animals–animals living and dying–no longer figure in our everyday lives.
I think this is a very far point and I completely agree with what he is saying. Americans especially, do not see enough wildlife throughout the day to actually know how real they are. It sounds weird, but not seeing something everyday can make you forget what it's like to put yourself in their shoes.
Though animals are still very much “things” in the eyes of American law, change is in the air. Thirty-seven states have recently passed laws making some forms of animal cruelty a crime, 21 of them by ballot initiative. Following protests by activists, McDonald’s and Burger King forced significant improvements in the way the U.S. meat industry slaughters animals
This is an optimistic or hopeful way to bring accomplishments into the article. I liked that Pollan put this quote in here because it made me hopeful for the future and hopeful for animal cruelty.
Earlier this year, Germany became the first nation to grant animals a constitutional right: the words “and animals” were added to a provision obliging the state to respect and protect the dignity of human beings. The farming of animals for fur was recently banned in England.
I believe animals should have some rights even though they cannot speak, they are still living breathing creatures like us. I think he put these Europe accomplishments in the article because he is using it as leverage that the U.S. needs to do something about the animal cruelty.
Slowly but surely, the white man’s circle of moral consideration was expanded to admit first blacks, then women, then homosexuals. In each case, a group once thought to be so different from the prevailing “we” as to be undeserving of civil rights was, after a struggle, admitted to the club. Now it was animals’ turn.
Pollan says it's the animals turn to go to war (not literally). Since animals can't fight their own battle, Pollan wants us to start a movement to keep these animals alive longer and treat them like living things not toys.
Eating animals, wearing animals, experimenting on animals, killing animals for sport: all these practices, so resolutely normal to us
Pollan is using pathos by making all of the ways we use animals barbaric. He claims in a matter of years, we will soon not realize right from wrong.
speciesism
Meaning, "the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals."
If this sounds like a good recipe for cognitive dissonance (if not indigestion), that was sort of the idea.
Pollan wants to experience new things and look at new perspectives, which means he's open to new and odd experiments.
The first time I opened Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation,” I was dining alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium-rare.
I thought this was a different way to introduce the article but it caught my attention and made me curious.