Animal rights
Here’s something that’s been bugging me for a while: animal rights. More and more people are talking about animal rights in a casual sort of way without really thinking about what that would mean. I’ll just be up front and say it: Animals don’t have rights. Here’s why:
What is a right?
Ask a hundred people and you’ll get a hundred different stupid looks. Duh, rights let you do things, right? Actually, not exactly. That ability has always been there. Animals illustrate this very well; they literally have the capacity to do anything within their power. They can eat, drink, sleep, run, jump, kill, maim, invade, and stalk, sometimes on a daily basis! Nothing constrains an animal besides natural factors such as hunger, disease, and predation.
Having no rights is in fact a state of perfect anarchic freedom. You can do whatever you want, up to and including acts however savage and barbarous as you wish, and others can do the very same to you if they are able. The social order is determined by strength and ability to resist the predation of others. It is an animal existence.
But humans don’t do that stuff. That’s because we have rights, a human construction intended to restrain negative human behavior. For example, my right to life and property prevents you from murdering me or stealing my stuff without getting punished. The key is this: rights constrain potential malicious behavior by using the threat of justified retaliation by the wronged party or a so empowered third party (the government, police, etc). Censor me or search my bags without permission and you’ll get sued. Steal my stuff and you’ll get locked up. Attack me and you’ll get shot. etc.
Why can’t animals have them?
Animals can’t have rights because rights are (1) mutually agreed-upon societal constructions that are (2) understood by and enforceable against the bound parties. Not only are animals bereft of an empowered third party to enforce these hypothetical rights, but there isn’t even any type of mutual agreement that certain behavior is malicious and wrong in the first place! For example, humans believe that killing without provocation is wrong; animals don’t, and can’t, or else all the carnivores would starve.
This is because to an animal, might makes right; there really is no behavior that is “wrong” in the human sense of the word. The lion eats the gazelle because it’s hungry, and the gazelle drinks at whatever watering hole it wants because it’s thirsty. Were these animals to gain rights, then the lion would be infringing the gazelle’s right to life (and triggering the gazelle’s right to self-defense), and the gazelle would be infringing on some other animal’s property rights. How would the animals understand these things?
In the wild, only an animal with no rights can interact with another animal. Otherwise, for example, predator animals would have to be legally be punished for their victims’ right to life to mean anything. Similarly, if animals had a right to live lives free of cruelty, then if that right were to be enforceable against humans for factory-farming them (as many animal rights activists desire), then the right would have to be equally enforceable against other animals for forcing them to live lives full of fear where they can be brutally eaten alive at any time.
Animal behavior itself is incompatible with the idea of rights. The moment animals get rights, then other animals must be legally punished for violating those rights or else they’re meaningless. The take-home point is this:
Animals cannot have rights until other animals can be legally punished for infringing those rights. As such an idea is absurd in the extreme, we have to reject the notion that animals can have rights.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Hear hear. Perfectly articulated. You have brilliantly shown exactly how stupid the concept of animal rights is, and I really couldn’t have put it better or more succinctly.
The problem with this, though, is a problem of social perception. By saying “animals have no rights” you have now (in the eyes of a lot of people who jump to conclusions) put yourself in a position legitimizing cruelty to animals. And by cruelty to animals, I obviously don’t mean “killing them and eating them”, I mean factory farming – what basically amounts to pointless profit-driven torture, with social gains that are far outweighed by the social costs. Because in social terminology, “animal rights” is the opposite of “animal cruelty”, and thus spurning one automatically associates you with the other, and all its related terms and ideologies (i.e. anti-animal rights probably means you’re also pro industry, anti-environmentalist, pro Hummer, etc. etc.). I’m sure you’ve already encountered this wonderful American binary system of guilt by association for being a gun enthusiast. You’re pro-gun rights? You imperialist, Bible-thumping, neocon pro-lifer!
I’m anti-industrialized farming not because I believe in animal rights, but because agribusiness treats animals as if they aren’t animals (and, incidentally, the animal rights activists are doing this too, as you have pointed out). And every time we treat nature as if it is something it isn’t, we get into big trouble. Every environmental and social problem we have arises from humanity treating nature (ourselves included) as if it weren’t what it actually is.
November 30th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
P.S. Shouldn’t this belong on your other blog?
November 30th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Yeah, it’s frustrating how people lump you in with the on-TV fanatics if you share even one thing in common with them. Against affirmative action? Looks like you’re a racist! Approve of the stimulus? Must be a commie!
Also, I don’t have no other blog anymore; I decided a while back to consolidate everything here.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Also, “factory farming” puts humans in charge of animals’ lives in ways that they are never in charge of animals that are living “in the wild.” So although the factory-farmed animals might not have “rights” in the legal/logical/philosophical sense that you talk about, it’s also not right/appropriate/logical to put them in the same category as wild animals in terms of their relations to humans. Once we’ve decided to make animals entirely dependent on us for their every living moment, it seems to me that we become more responsible for their well-being–and factory-farmed animals don’t seem very well off by any standards! (Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma paints about as bleak a picture as one can imagine of the sad life of a factory-farmed animal…) The same can be said of our pets–once we domesticate animals, they live very different lives than their wild cousins, thanks to how we treat them (for better or worse), and I’m guessing that you’re not saying pet owners have a perfect right to be endlessly cruel to their pets without any consequences because the pets have no “rights”…?? (Think Winnie!) So we might not say that these animals (farmed, or pets) have “rights” in the legal sense that humans do–but I think most people would agree that for our part, we humans (who take over the lives of these animals) have responsibilities toward them to treat them ethically and without needless cruelty… (Again–think Winnie!)
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am
Alma, I think you may be falling into the trap that Rafa describes: that of thinking that the opposite of animal rights is animal cruelty, and that something akin to animal rights is necessary to prevent cruelty. Again, being against animal rights doesn’t mean I’m in favor of animal cruelty!
Yes, once we’ve domesticated an animal we’re in the position of needing to take care of it, but that is generally provided for by the animal’s purpose in being domesticated. The ill-treated hunting dog fails to retrieve felled birds; the mistreated cow gives little milk: the abused house-pet becomes aggressive and temperamental. If we exploit our domesticated animals, then they become less useful for the functions for which they have been domesticated. Responsible owners endeavor to prevent these outcomes because it would cost them time, money, and aggravation in correcting the undesirable behavior or acquiring another animal.
Factory-farming is in fact similar. Factory-farmed animals live lives full of fear in unsanitary conditions, which makes their meat tough and often unsanitary. Organic meat tastes better and is the clearly superior product as a result of the less cruel raising and slaughtering process. In the end it will probably win out because it is more appetizing and healthier, and you get what you pay for.
December 6th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
In a small addition to what Nate said, rights don’t fit into the picture, and shouldn’t be forced to. Natural common sense does, and animal cruelty/factory farming doesn’t make any common sense. It doesn’t even make any monetary sense, even though that’s why the whole dang thing was invented.
December 6th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Also, you “don’t have no other blog”? Must be a rapper!