Though this Chapter is principally concerned with the ethics of killing, particularly where it concerns animals, it is also concerned with the issue of death more generally. I really don’t know whether I have been over-obsessed with death, since it is such a taboo subject that one never finds out how obsessed other people are, but the very fact that it is a taboo subject is one of the many things about human beings that I completely fail to understand. So often in my life, it has seemed to me that many people will not acknowledge that they are going to die, and hence do not prepare themselves for the only thing that can be absolutely guaranteed in life. However, before I get onto the subjects of euthanasia, suicide and abortion, I will first expound the views I developed, mainly whilst working at Endgrain [a wholefood shop], about the ethics of killing for the purposes of eating.
I have never been a principled vegetarian, though I have spent long periods of my life being largely a practising vegetarian. Since I was into experimenting with the foods I was selling, my time at Endgrain was certainly one of my more vegetarian phases. One of the reasons I never became a vegetarian is because I always knew that, if I was going to be principled about eating animal products, I would have to go the whole hog and become vegan. That would have been too great a sacrifice. Besides, my main objection was not to the killing of animals for food but to the imprisonment of animals in farms. Thus, I had more compunction about drinking milk than I had about eating rabbit or lamb. My own experience of vegetarians is that they are not usually moral vegetarians but aesthetic vegetarians who just can’t bear the thought of eating animal flesh. They also don’t usually apply the principle of universalisation and consider what the consequences for animals would be if everyone became vegetarian. See Letters 2008, which was written long after this Chapter.
The argument in favour of vegetarianism that impressed me most was always the environmentalist one that animals are extremely inefficient producers of protein. You have to feed many times more protein to an animal than you can ever hope to get out of it. Since protein is, in nutritional terms, what we eat animal products for, it would make much more sense, in an under-fed world, for us to eat the protein that those animals wastefully convert. Though sheep may be able to utilise rugged land which has no other agricultural use, a lot of farmed animals utilise land which would much more efficiently grow crops. Consequently, I have always advocated that people should eat less meat and should, as far as possible, eat free-range products and lamb in preference to battery products and beef. The consequences of that would be that there would be less edible animals in the world, which amounts to deprivation of life through human control.
There is no precedent in nature for not eating meat as a matter of principle. Ruminants, such as cows and sheep, eat grasses because they have lived in fields since time immemorial and their stomachs are perfectly adapted to the digestion of grasses. Also, they are not really capable of killing other animals so that course of action has never been an option. Carnivores eat meat because they can kill and they have digestive tracts which are adapted to digesting meat because their ancestors used that method for obtaining food. We, on the other hand, have inhabited all environments and there is no limit to what we can, and do, eat. We became the eaters we are today partly because, through the use of tools, we learned to kill and partly because we also learned to farm. Evolution has had no chance to selectively adapt us to a particular type of diet. Many vegetarians claim that our digestive systems are not like those of carnivores and many food reformers claim that eating meat leads to putrefaction in the bowels as well as colitis and cancer. However, the fact is that we have not only survived, but flourished, as meat eaters for thousands of years, and evolution has shown no sign of selecting against this trait.
As I became more interested in biology, after leaving Endgrain, I became even less inclined towards vegetarianism as the whole issue became less and less clear-cut in my mind. My understanding became that life is a function of the cell, the life of the organism being created by the cells, and that the life of a plant cell is qualitatively no different, and certainly not inferior, to that of an animal cell. I fully accept that the eating of plant products does not necessarily entail the premature death of the whole plant, but the eating of grains and other seeds does represent deprivation of future life, which is after all what killing is. Consequently, in respect of the killing of living cells, I couldn’t distinguish between plants and animals. Vegetarians may claim that plants do not feel pain, whereas animals do, but the whole of my attitude towards the ethics of eating has been over the issue of suffering, not killing. To be killed is not to experience pain; it is the ultimate release from all suffering. Whatever death may bring, and I will come onto the subject of a possible afterlife shortly, I am absolutely certain it doesn’t entail conscious regret at having had one’s life curtailed. Grief at death is not on behalf of the deceased; it is mourning one’s own sense of loss.
Vegetarians often claim that eating meat is to not feel reverence for animals. I just don’t see where that reverence is supposed to end. As I see it, much of the ethics of eating has to do with degree of relatedness. We are most related to other humans, followed by the great apes, followed by monkeys, followed by other mammals, followed by amphibians, reptiles and birds, followed by fish, followed by plants and fungi, followed by bacteria. Make no mistake about it, every single bacterium on this planet is your distant cousin; whenever you put disinfectant down your loo, you are gratuitously killing your kith and kin. Insofar as you have to spend your life killing other living organisms, if only because you have to eat something, then the issue is over where you put the dividing line in that progression.
At the start of Covid lockdown in 2020, I was reading Yuval Noah Harari’s “Homo Deus”, which is very critical of human control and exploitation of farmed animals. It was also necessary to queue outside the butcher’s shop in Hawes (where I used to buy two flavoured sausages every week). I made an impulsive decision not to buy sausages that week, or any subsequent week, and I became pescatarian. Following on from what I said earlier, my rationale was that I was not prepared to eat farmed animals, but I was prepared to eat animals which had been free at the moment of death. Theoretically, that meant I could have eaten game or rabbit, but in practice the only animals I have eaten since then are fish. I am troubled by the idea of milk and dairy products, since the animals are undoubtedly exploited, but I console myself with the knowledge that cows do need to be milked (and I have no objection to the existence of cows) and that not all the eggs that are laid can become chickens (so we might as well eat the ones that don’t). My dividing line has become ‘the killing of slaves’.
Admittedly, sentimentality undoubtedly plays a part in the ethics of eating, and I would be the first to admit that I could never have eaten any animal that I had been fond of during its life. But society’s cut-off point for determining where killing is acceptable and where it is a crime is very anthropocentric and abrupt. Though I understand how it came about, in a Judeo-Christian culture whose erroneous beliefs were reinforced by the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes, I cannot understand how rational people can regard all other life forms as distinctly inferior to those of humans. The value of a life, and hence the degree to which its premature, unwanted curtailment should be regarded as a crime, depends far more upon its beneficial effect upon other lives than upon species designation. The murder of a much-loved animal, whose death causes grief, is a far greater crime than the killing of a friendless vagrant, whose death won’t be noticed by anyone.
With regard to hunting and bloodsports, I am prepared to accept that there is a need for the humane culling of some wild animals that constitute pests, and I have no objection to the humane killing of wild animals for food. However, I find the idea that such processes should be considered pleasurable sports totally obscene. When the pro-hunting lobby bangs on about infringement of individual liberties, I am inclined to say that laws against rape, child abuse and domestic violence are infringements of the individual liberties of rapists, paedophiles and wife-beaters. Laws are made, or changed, when the majority of the population changes its view, often in the light of new evidence. During the 80s and 90s (and beyond), great strides were made in the field of animal rights, but there is still a long way to go.
On numerous occasions in my life, I have known farmers to threaten to shoot my dogs, not because the dogs were doing anything wrong, but seemingly because farmers love to make it known that they have a callous attitude to animals. What they were actually threatening to do was to shoot my best friends, in order to prevent the remote possibility that my best friends might have some insignificant effect upon their livelihoods. It is well known that farmers can, and do, get away with shooting any domestic animals that are on their land, even if they aren’t actually causing trouble. With such an abrupt two-tier justice system, is it any wonder that I would have felt inclined towards killing any farmer that did shoot any dog of mine, knowing that there was no other way that I was going to get anything remotely resembling justice.
Having said that, I have always been totally opposed to capital punishment. Quite apart from all the standard arguments against it, it has long been established in law that the most insidious aspect of murder is the intent, or will, to kill, rather than its execution, so accidental manslaughter is a lesser crime. By baying for blood, the pro-hanging lobby is actually guilty of the worst aspect of murder – the desire that another human being should die. No-body, either individually or collectively, should be granted the right to decide that other people should die against their will, though everyone has the right to commit murder and face the consequences. However, I think that all convicts should have the right to opt for the death penalty.
That last sentence is really just another way of saying that I think suicide should be legalised and de-stigmatised, as should euthanasia. In recent years, when asked by people why I smoke, I have taken to saying that I do it in order to lessen the chance that I might die of old age, and that I will continue to smoke until euthanasia is legalised, de-stigmatised and made easy. How can anyone who has thought about it possibly want to die by petering out gradually? How can anyone claim that they would rather put up with any amount of prolonged pain and suffering than die voluntarily? Though I do appreciate the need for legal safeguards, I think that for a society that considers itself humane to not even be prepared to discuss the possibility of legalising euthanasia is a sign of total lack of humanity. Medical ethics dictate the preservation of life at all reasonable costs, without any consideration for the future quality of that life. Advances in medicine have meant that people can be kept alive through illnesses that would previously have killed them, and consequently that more and more people face the prospect of just petering out and eventually dying through senility and dementia. That is my worst nightmare scenario, and I sincerely hope that I will have the courage and ability to commit suicide before that can happen to me.
My resolve on that score was strengthened by my having to watch, at close quarters, Jean [my mother] go through the last 5 years of her life in several York old people’s and nursing homes. They were years she never wanted to go through, and she was not reticent about expressing that when she was still compos mentis. She attempted suicide on at least two occasions, by taking all the pills she had at her disposal, resulting in her being expelled from the old people’s home. By the time she died, in 2010, she was completely demented and didn’t know who I, or anyone else, was. I hated visiting her (not least because of all the other old people who were not living but merely remaining alive), but I continued to do so, approximately twice a week. What was the point of keeping her alive? She received no benefit from being alive, and neither did anyone else, apart from the nursing home staff having employment. Yes, I realise that no-one could take responsibility for killing her, but if she herself, whilst compos mentis, had signed a document stating the terms under which she wished to be euthanised, the responsibility would have been hers, and her ‘killer’ would have been following her orders.
When Switzerland became notorious for legalising euthanasia, most especially at Dignitas, I was struck by the fact that, despite going to enormous expense (and often trouble) getting there, the patients still have to self-administer the poison. Why can’t people mail-order the poison, or better still buy it from their local pharmacy? Yes, I know I’m being ridiculous with regard to the issue of safeguards, but it is surely better, not least for their relatives, that people who are determined to commit suicide can do so cleanly and painlessly rather than messily.
Abortion is a slightly more tricky issue than euthanasia since it involves making decisions on someone’s behalf before they have the ability to make any decision themselves, rather than after they have lost the ability. However, I have always been in favour of abortion, since I have never looked at it from the unborn child’s point of view, but rather from the mother’s and society’s in general. When you consider that the birth control pill does not in fact prevent conception, and that every menstrual period represents an unborn child, then the right to life is not the issue in abortion. The unborn child is not conscious of any future potential. The issue at stake is the right of those who are conscious of the future to exercise what control they can over that future. It should be fairly evident from all of the above that I do believe in respect for life but not in its sacrosanctity.
I will now move on to the vexed question of what death is. It has been perceptively said that the actual cause of death of all animals is invariably asphyxiation. All the individual cells of an animal will carry on living as long as they are supplied with oxygen and a source of energy. It is exceptionally rare for the source of energy to completely dry up, so the reason for the death of all the cells is because, due to the primary cause of death, the oxygen supply ceases. Medical science has now reached the point where it can keep anyone alive indefinitely, even after brain death, by artificially supplying oxygen and energy to the whole body. It is inevitable that the issue of death will increasingly become a matter of decision rather than a natural event.
With regard to the issue of a possible afterlife, until May 1994 I adamantly believed that death was final, that there was no afterlife, and that all phenomena which seemed to point to the existence of an afterlife could be explained by telepathy. For instance, I have always been convinced by some of the personal evidence that points to the phenomenon of reincarnation. In hypnotised or hallucinatory states, people do experience past lives, but I believed that those memories were hidden away in their sub-conscious minds, having got there through a long succession of telepathic transfers since the lives of the people concerned. They were not strictly reincarnations, but transferred memories; the people concerned were not living again in new bodies; their strongest memories and emotions were being relived by new minds. In May 1994, the most philosophically challenging event of my life occurred, though I didn’t realise immediately that I would need to rethink my whole attitude to death. Before I relate the story, I will remind, or inform, readers of what I had regarded as an old wives tale concerning the falling of a picture from a wall presaging, or signifying, a death.
My dog, Pluto, was 14 years old and was ailing badly. He was hardly able to walk and no longer ate anything. I knew that I would have to take him to the vet to have him put down, which I certainly wasn’t relishing. One evening, I spoke out loud to him, as I had been wont to do, and told him that he had my permission to die. That night I woke up to the sound of him whimpering in the kitchen, which I had never known him to do before. It was 4 o’clock. I went downstairs and carried him upstairs, and put him on my bed, which had always been his favourite sleeping place. I got into bed beside him and snuggled up to him. He stopped whimpering, and became very calm, but his breathing was very sonorous. About half an hour later, he very obviously let out his last breath.
The next day, I layed a large bonfire in the garden and held a ceremonial funeral pyre, with Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend” blasting out through open windows from the house. I also rang Martin [my brother] to tell him the news, and the first question he asked was, “What time did he die?” I said, “4.30.” Apparently, that same night 150 or so miles away in Oxfordshire, Martin had woken to the sound of a crash. He had looked at his watch, which said 4.30, before going out onto the landing to discover that a portrait of Arthur [our father]had fallen from the wall. I have never been able to accept the ludicrous notion that this was co-incidence. Something, and I’ve no idea what sort of entity I mean, that was cognisant of Pluto’s death, caused that picture to fall from the wall. My suspicion is that Arthur had something to do with it. He is, after all, the only dead person who would have any cause to be ‘watching over’ Martin and me.
I have never been able to fit this event into a coherent philosophy in respect of death. Consequently, the effect has been to make me a lot less adamant in my disbelief in an afterlife. Indeed, it has made me a lot less sure about a lot of my beliefs, though it has actually re-enforced, if that were necessary, my disbelief in the materialist paradigm that characterises neo-Darwinism. As Shakespeare said, in one of his most famous lines, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”