American Values and codes (all)

Project 3 Draft 1

I believe that animals do have some rights and that even though they do not have the ability to speak for themselves it is human decency to care for these living things. It is not alright to put these animals in extreme pain just for us to eat them. Mammals, fish, and birds all do have the feeling of pain and should be put down quickly and morally if they are going to be consumed as food. They should not be tortured slowly such as lobsters being boiled alive but they are really insects so that is the difference between lobsters and other animals. “Animals Like Us” by Hal Herzog is a very good article to represent some of my own personal thoughts on the relationships between humans and animals. It tells about the middle ground that is unknown between two very serious thoughts of eating animals or the certain treatment of many of them and both sides of it. Whether it is right or wrong, but no true answer is really given as it is a matter of opinion. The other article I will use is “Against Meat” by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is about his struggle and what is along the lines of a quest to give up meat with the struggle of its nutrients and his grandmother who had a huge effect on his life. There is a large grey area mentioned in both of these articles as well as consider the lobster and both sides are also given. There are good points to either side of this grey area in which many people reside on the relationships to animals and the way in which we treat or interact with them.

Project 3 Draft 2

“Consider the Lobster” is all about the two sides in which people think about lobsters and how they are prepared. It also highly revolves around one festival in Maine. This festival is known for having the world’s largest lobster cooker. People have done so much science behind the pain that a lobster feels when it is being boiled alive or cooked. There is extensive ways where people go out of their way to give the lobsters a painless quick death to avoid the “torturing” of them. This is them preventing their self-guilt on killing and eating these animals. Many people such as those from P.E.T.A boycott the festival in Maine each year saying not to eat the lobster and that it is so wrong to do so. “So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the U.S. Is it right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice? (Wallace)” The grey area is shown within as it asks the questions in which many do not even considering asking themselves or others, but some do. (Put into intro) The human brain in comparison is talked about and how the human brain has parts a lobster does not that allow us to experience pain and them not to. “Though it sounds more sophisticated, a lot of the neurology in this latter claim is still either false or fuzzy. The human cerebral cortex is the brain-part that deals with higher faculties like reason, metaphysical self-awareness, language, etc. Pain reception is known to be part of a much older and more primitive system of nociceptors and prostaglandins that are managed by the brain stem and thalamus (Wallace)”. Lobsters do really feel pain as much as many do not like to admit. Just because they do not have the same brain makeup as many animals on the planet and are much more similar to an insect does not mean much. It is easy to believe that they do not as they are only the insects of the see and are insignificant to humans other than if they are for their food. There is also the other side of the lobster festival which is all the benefits of it and that many do not consider the lobster to be afraid or feelings. This is true as lobster do not know that they are going to be boiled alive or killed when they are caught. They fight to get back into water, but any water is fine for them as that is what keeps them alive. They are able to survive outside of water for some amount of time, but they cannot live outside of it always.

Project 3 Draft 3

The grey area has two sides two in which both make sense but show the compassion or lack the of it of the human race. People can either care a little too much or even too little for animals in many different circumstances. “Animals Like Us” talks about the connection in which people are able to create and maintain with animals which is sometimes stronger than those that people build with other people. There are many stories of people who treat animals horribly and never change but “then there is Jim Thompson, a 25-year-old doctoral student in mathematics. Before beginning graduate school, Jim had worked in a poultry research laboratory in Lexington, Kentucky, where one of his jobs was dispatching baby chicks at the end of the experiments. For a while, this posed no problem for Jim. However, things changed one day when he was looking for a magazine to read on a plane and his mother handed him a copy of The Animals’ Agenda, a magazine that advocated animal rights. He never ate meat again (Herzog)” due to the trauma of realizing what he is doing to these animals and the atrocities that people commit to animals without any worry or concern. He did not want to be just like those that are being shown within the articles that he had read. He had a choice of keep “dispatching” all of these baby chicks or change. He took his change a bit far and never ate meat again but that’s not exactly what is needed even though it does help. He had no confusion of right and wrong when it came to what he was doing to when he changed. He did not think to question what he was doing until he saw the other side and he didn’t question the other side he just joined it. He was able to completely avoid that thin gray area that many reside with their questions and thoughts. People do flip sides of this unknown line easily, but many do not. Some either stay a vegan or vegetarian and others stay a hunter, poacher, cattle rancher, or anything to do with the killing or consuming of animals. The general better treatment of animals is what is necessary and only using what you need or what you must not over consuming or over using.

Project 3 Final Draft

Lobsters, Animals, People, and Limitations

David Foster Wallace who wrote “Consider the Lobster” talks a lot about the limitations of life. In conversation of lobsters Wallace says “So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the U.S. Is it right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice? (Wallace)” Limitations can be preexisting by things out of your own control or they can exist due to yourself such as eating meat or being a vegetarian. Limitations out of one’s control could be a human’s inability to fly because they do not have wings. The limitations of life are also talked about in the article “Animals Like Us” Hal Herzog which is all about the debate of animal’s relationships with humans and what we allow ourselves to do to or with animals. Last is “Against Meat” by Jonathan Safran Foer which considers the limitations in which people put on themselves or that are put on them. Rights, intelligence, awareness, species along with other things are examples of limitations that that are not exactly in someone’s control. Limitations or the lack thereof that are or are not in our control are the cause of views, beliefs, and behaviors of people and society.

David Foster Wallace talks of the limitations when it comes to the consumption of lobsters and the overall limitations people create or are given in life. For Wallace there is a certain limitation in thought when it comes to the lobster. Wallace talks about how “the more important point here, though, is that the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing (Wallace)”. He may not directly say it but he has a certain moral dilemma and limitation in killing and consuming the lobster. Even though he believes that eating the lobster is something that is alright to do it is also a struggle for him as well as many others. It is killing a living thing that only is being killed due to speciation and intelligence. Due to the lobster’s lack of intelligence and capability because of a smaller brain we as humans consume them which is their limitation. This limitation can cause their death and for humans to eat them but, is this something that is right to do? Many people do not consider what they are doing and don’t even want to think about what they are doing as wrong as it is too difficult to consider whether something life is worth your enjoyment. For some they make their own limitation and do not eat it for morals, but others don’t have the limitation and do eat it. I believe that it is alright to eat them but only to a certain extent. Everyone has to have a limit to how much they can consume and what they are willing to consume. In order to kill and consume the lobster people really should consider if they are doing something that is morally alright to them. That’s where the issue of limitations with being a vegetarian or not comes into play. Is eating meat alright or not? This refers to all animals instead of just lobsters due to cruelty and more.

Plenty of other limitations exist in the world outside of those that deal with intelligence or consumption of animals and the debate behind what is moral and what is not. There is the limitations in which people set that have to do with their belief system or their religion. When Jonathan Safran Foer was a kid his grandmother was the best cook ever to him. She was amazing and everything she cooked he enjoyed so much. Eventually though after one meal he decided to start being a vegetarian. He had struggled for years to follow through with it as he enjoyed meat too much. Eventually he set the limitation upon himself to become fully vegetarian, as did his wife, for the benefit of his children’s health. There is also the limitation of his religion as well which must be kosher which means no pork. His grandmother had survived the holocaust and had got so into food and the serving it to other because the lack of food she had. She had to survive off scraps for years in order to survive. His grandmother was telling the story of how she survived and said “’The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.’ ‘He saved your life.’ ‘I didn’t eat it.’ ‘You didn’t eat it?’ ‘It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.’ ‘Why?’ ‘What do you mean why?’ ‘What, because it wasn’t kosher?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘But not even to save your life?’ ‘If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.’ (Foer)”. Foer’s grandmother was in the midst of death, yet she had still not taken the pork that would’ve secured her living just for the fact that it was not kosher. She did not take it due to the limitation she had put on herself with her religion. It is not a bad thing to follow your religion or to give up a certain type of meat with it. She makes a good point about how “if nothing matters, there’s nothing to save”. If you do not follow the limitations in which are set by yourself or a religion what is the point of anything. I do not necessarily agree with her as I am not religious and do not set many limitations upon myself, yet some believe if there is no limitation and nothing matters then why is anything worth anything. What is the point of anything. Then there is the article “Animals Like Us” by Hal Herzog. This is largely about the treatment and the relationships between humans and animals. One of the relationships described is “there is Jim Thompson, a 25-year-old doctoral student in mathematics. Before beginning graduate school, Jim had worked in a poultry research laboratory in Lexington, Kentucky, where one of his jobs was dispatching baby chicks at the end of the experiments. For a while, this posed no problem for Jim. However, things changed one day when he was looking for a magazine to read on a plane and his mother handed him a copy of The Animals’ Agenda, a magazine that advocated animal rights. He never ate meat again (Herzog)”. Now in this Jim had never considered what he was doing. Killing baby animals is something that I find extremely immoral. There is also the even worse part that they were being experimented on. In this quote Jim transferred from having no limitations at all to becoming a vegetarian like Foer had done and put a very large limitation on himself. This reason plays into Wallace’s point of limitations and why many do not eat lobsters. Due to the “cruelty” towards lobsters and the cooking of them while alive many refrain from eating them. This does go for many animals but Wallace does specifically talk about lobsters for the majority of his writing.

Limitations are everywhere whether it is to animals, religion, government, society, or self-imposed. There are laws and rules everywhere that are limitations as well. People need to place their own limitations in life no matter what it is that they are limiting themselves to. It could be limiting how much or what they eat, what they do during their days, or what they support or what they do not. There is no actual limit on limitations as they can be whatever. They can be so extreme it is crazy and unrealistic or so small that it is completely irrelevant. There are endless limitations that exist and all for different reasons. It controls anything and everything in life and there is only us creating them or our inability to break them

Citations

Foer, Jonathan Safran. “Why Jonathan Safran Foer Chose to Give Up Meat.” The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 7 Oct. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11foer-t.html.

Herzog, Hal. “Animals Like Us – Features – Utne Reader.” Utne, Ogden Publications, Inc, 2011, www.utne.com/environment/animals-like-us-human-pet-relationships.

Magazine, Gourmet. “Consider the Lobster.” Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : Gourmet.com, Aug. 2004, www.gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobstera475.html?currentPage=5.