Concerning The Consumption of Animals, or An Entreaty to Think Before Asserting Remarkably Stupid Things from the notes of a future vampire-vet part 2

Review: the only rights people have are those granted by a governing institution for it's own existence which relies on an enforced, socially or otherwise, pattern of property distribution and exchange; when people do have rights, it is usually only because their infringement would be destructive to a political institution, e.g. kingship, oligarchy, democracy, &c. The very nature of money then, the bare-bones of which is always the produce of animal labour, and the animals themselves, presupposes the following: if humans are to have rights (not natural rights: those are fairy tales - I mean legal rights, which are only as strong as the party, government, or faction enforcing the laws) then animals cannot. We cannot say: we make the sale, slavery, slaughter, and consumption of animals the foundation of economic transaction in order to consolidate political powers which are capable of granting us rights for ourselves, and once we have those, we will give rights to animals. We cannot say that because it undermines our very power to decree such things.

Animals, then, do not have rights; that's not to say that they cannot, however, have rights. What I mean here is that it is merely logically inconsistent for a person who fancies themselves to have rights to assert that animals do. Unfortunately, free speech is allowed, if not exactly encouraged in this country (I guess I shouldn't complain too much since that mere formality is keeping me out of jail...at least so far) so one can assert whatever they damn well like. It is therefore your right, Mr. Smelly Hippy-ass Animal Rights Activist, to assert that animals should have rights. That's fine; you may assert whatever damned retarded nonsesne you please; only, observe the consequences. If animals are to have rights, then everything after the agricultural revolution - say the last eight thousand years or so - and consequently all of human civilization becomes a violation of those rights. Therefore, Mr. Smelly Hippy-ass Animal Rights Activist, get your smelly, hippy, ass the hell out of the city, give up all your money (I'd be more than happy to recieve it) get thee to a forrest, and start pickin' berries. And shut the fuck up, or I'll kill you. Really. Your just obliterated your only defence; you no longer have rights because you just destroyed any political or economic institutions capable of enforcing laws to prevent me from terminating annoying people like you.

To clarify: there's nothing wrong with being a vegetarian. A lot of them are great people. Some of my best friends are vegetarians, and I cannot but admire their resolve. They, however, are not stupid; they will tell you it is a personal choice they have made, and they don't mind other people eating meat. You know why they will tell you that? Because eating meat isn't wrong!
Animals do not have rights so please, eat them - eat veal, eat chicken, eat horse. (Mad props to the Italians for a quarter million horses slaughtered for their meat in 2005. That's 48, 000 metric tons of pastissada!) Or don't eat any meat at all if you don't want to. Just think before you say stupid shit.

Concerning The Consumption of Animals, or An Entreaty to Think Before Asserting Remarkably Stupid Things from the notes of a future vampire-vet part 1

I love animals. I also eat them. I have rather recently charted my course for the future, and one of my stops shall be a veterinary school (hopefully Auburn, Alabama). I intend to become a veterinarian (among other, more esoteric things) so naturally I must love animals? Indeed, that is the first thing which comes to people's minds when they hear of my new plan: "Oh, you'd like to be a vet? I didn't know that you loved animals." Firstly: most peoples love animals - or mammals at least - especially very young animals,who, after all, are biologically engineered to be terribly cute. The assumption that follows next is that I must have strong feelings about animals rights (I do, as you shall soon enough see; only, not exactly the feelings people fancy). Animals, I most vehemently assert, do not have rights. Further, there is no contradiction between on the one hand liking animals, yet also being exceptionally fond of eating their flesh.

A little lesson in history: the earliest human societies consisted of hunter gatherers. These bands followed wild animals around and threw stuff at them. On very lucky days, perhaps an animal would drop dead from old age, or maybe it couldn't get away fast enough (arthritis, after all, is by no means specific to humans. Paleopathological evidence of such chronic illnesses can be found in dinosaur skeletons) and our prehistoric people got to eat more than a few handfuls of (probably shitty tasting) berries. Meat, however, goes bad very quickly: if you don't believe me, kill your roommate (the one that sings show tunes in the shower at 3 am), leave him somewhere, and see how long it takes for people to notice the funny smell. This presents a problem to someone who wishes to eat meat regularly. Sure, you can smoke meat, or you can salt it and it will keep for a while; none of these methods, however, can touch any of my mother's freezer records.

The domestication of animal populations then was the ancient world equivalent of a freezer. Suddenly, by keeping your meat alive, you keep it from rotting. Then, when a suitable occasion arises e.g. the return of your son who wasted half of your money on wine and cheap hookers, the backyard barbeque to which you invited בעל‎ (Ba'al), &c all you have to do is fetch a priest (though, things become more complicated when the Israeli kingship tries to consolodate power over the countryside by making the Temple the only place animals can be sacrificed) and cut the animal's jugular, and just like that, fresh meat, and no freezerburn! [Note, this is an oversimplification of the process. cf. liber levitici for all the rules]

The domestication - and by domestication one may as well say abuse: the keeping of animals in placed they'd probably rather not be till a time comes when it is convenient for us to brutally kill them and eat them. I can't imagine free range chickens are all that thrilled about being killed - of animals brought about a radical change in human society. Most human societies shift from matriarchies to patriarchies, and livestock become the world's first currency. The Latin word pecunia - money - comes from pecus, pecudis, a word that refers to a single head of cattle. Animals were the first private property, the first currency.

Natural rights don't exist. Legal rights presuppose property. All laws that protect our rights as citizens of x country are usually only incidental to the laws which protect our property rights as land or livestock owners in x country. The bare-bones of any legal system is punishment for the destruction of property. While ancient law codices contain the usual prohibitions on killing, the bulk of them read similar to the following:

If a man had let an arable field to a(nother) man for cultivation, but he did not cultivate it, turning it into wasteland, he shall measure out three kur [measure of volume] of barley per iku [measure of area] of field. (Eshnuna 31)

If a man flooded the field of a man with water, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field. (Eshnuna 32)

If any one hire an ox, and put out its eye, he shall pay the owner one-half of its value. (Hammurabi 249)

and my very favourite Babylonian inscriptions of all time:

If a veterinary surgeon perform a serious operation on an ass or an ox, and cure it, the owner shall pay the surgeon one-sixth of a shekel as a fee.

If he perform a serious operation on an ass or ox, and kill it, he shall pay the owner one-fourth of its value. (Hammurabi 224 & 225)

The principles at work here are purely economic. If I injure your property such that it is less capable of earning money for you, I must pay you dammages. The same properties are at work with men:

If any one steal the minor son of another, he shall be put to death. Not because sons should be reared by their fathers. Not because he might become a malajusted member of society or develop Stokholm-syndrome or any nonsense like that, but because as the head of a household, your son is a force, cleverer, but not otherwise much different from an ox, that you can set to work to earn you money.

Apologies and Explanations

First: I should probably apologize to anyone who feels cheated by the title of this blog - it has nothing to do with either a small agricultural community in southwestern Ontario or kinky sex. I had hoped the subtitle would make that clear. Please do stay a while though. You never know when I might touch upon your favourite subjects!

Now, about me: I'm a university student and I work part time loading large trucks with heavy boxes. You would imagine that I would do most of my thinking at school; not so, however. Some of my cleverest ideas have been thought out during escapist flights from my unbelievably unfulfulling, low-paying job.