Should dogs be allowed in grocery stores, should I be able to eat horse meat?
We are here touching on one of the most difficult and critical issues of our time that appears to me to be wholly unaddressed. Only the Peter Singer, vegetarian, position is well known.
I'll give my opinion and then connect it to the disastrous behavior I see around me.
I believe it is self evident that moral systems exist to regulate human societies. Every society has its moral system and they have some overlap and many differences. We go to war regularly over our differing national moral systems, and come close to war even more often.
The fundamental purpose and support for a moral system is that it engenders cooperation among members of the society. By punishing some behaviors, making others taboo and stigmatizing yet others, the society leaves open all the areas in which cooperation is encouraged.
We can't steal valuable possessions of others lest we be punished; we can't marry our siblings lest we face taboos, nor can we have an affair with a friend's partner without stigma. Yet we can work with other peoples tools with permission, and spend much valuable time with siblings cooking, vacationing and living together. We (Americans) can work, travel and cook with our friends and their partners for everyone's benefit.
Our morals are designed to generate cooperation within our society.
What happens when we bring members of other societies into our society and when we bring in non-humans (pets, animals, food, etc)? Answer: we degrade our cooperative system.
Start with bringing in people from other moral systems. We don't allow Muslims to have multiple wives; it would destroy or degrade our serial marriage system. Similarly, we don't employ the Chinese criminal system in our courts nor the North Korean property rights system because both would make our own system dysfunctional.
Similarly, when we bring non-humans into our moral system we degrade our level of cooperation.
Bringing dogs into grocery stores because they are 'just like children' or 'family companions' generates hostility between dog owners, store managers, customers and other staff. Treating dogs as part of the American moral system (rather than the manner system,
see earlier blog) creates hostility and degrades cooperation.
Animal testing pits sick, dying and at-risk people against animals.
The most visible open combat is in the realm of killing animals for fur. That is open warfare in America.
Americans troops are being kept out of urban areas in Saudia Arabia and Iraq partially because of animal issues. We eat pig, they don't; we love dogs and they don't.
Think about American children turned against Japanese over our differing views of whales.
Summary: moral systems are designed to generate cooperation in a society. Bringing non-humans into the moral system (giving animals moral rights) degrades the cooperation.