A General Comment I am always amazed that animal people never seem to read books--or much of anything beyond a Tweet or short Facebook posting. Every day on this page, I am put in the position of trying to re-explain in sound bites ideas that I discussed at length in books and essays going back many years and that really cannot be explained in 140 characters. For example, in Animals, Property, and the Law, which I wrote in 1995, I presented an argument that, because animals are property, there are structural limitations on the level of protection that animal welfare can provide and it will rarely go beyond protecting those interests that are necessary for the economically efficient exploitation of animals. And every day, I deal with people who, completely oblivious to these ideas, just yammer on about how we need to pursue animal welfare reform because that will lead to abolition. That is absurd. That wont happen because it cant happen; welfare reform, in addition to increasing production efficiency, just makes people more comfortable about animal exploitation. Look at history. And when I give up trying to get people to read books and try to explain things in blog posts that extend over several pages, I am told by some that theyre too long and I should do them as podcasts if I expect people to engage anything that long. Every day, I get an endless number of emails and private messages asking me to explain what I have already explained many times. We have time to watch movies, play video games, and spend endless hours doing all sorts of things; we dont have time to read and think critically. We will do anything for the animals except educate ourselves so that we can address the issues in an intelligent matter and undo thousands of years of speciesist thinking. And its not just my work. I have met lots and lots of people who own Singers Animal Liberation, but few who have read it. The dead giveaway is when someone says, What? Singer is opposed to animal rights and he regards animal life as having less moral value? Given that a central point of the book is to reject rights in favor of a utilitarian approach that links moral value with human-like cognition, that sort of question indicates either that the person did not read Singer or that her/his reading comprehension is pretty poor. And if I have met a dozen animal people in my life who have read Regans The Case for Animal Rights, that would be a lot. If you care about this issue, you have an obligation to inform yourself about the issues. Part of the reason we are in the happy exploitation mess we are presently in is that many people think that uninformed opinions can replace careful analysis, or that theory isnt necessary. Thats dangerously wrong. If you deal with a page of writing, consider reading this: abolitionistapproach/the-necessity-of-theory/#.UpNFaSeAraE Indeed, I would say that this holds true not just for animal ethics but for most other pressing social and political issues. A Spanish philosopher, George Santayana (1863-1952), whom no one reads anymore, once said: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Think about that. And I am sorry if this post was too long for some! Gary L. Francione
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 13:22:53 +0000