Welcome back faithful reader. If you’re following this series, you know that not only did I not hate the last chapter, but even gave it some faint praise.
Your High Praise! challenge for this article is as follows: This chapter goes from page 25 to page 37. On what page was all of my goodwill consumed by an inferno of hate? 1
So the chapter starts…
Edward Cullen is the kind of vampire you’d want your daughter to date, if she had to date a vampire. –pg 25
If my daughter was dating any vampire (even Angel who I am a fan of), I would kill him as soon as possible and dare any court to convict me. Setting that aside, I do have to give this article credit for pointing out something subtle that again proves the Twilight movie was superior to the book. In the movie, we only ever see Bella eat vegetarian foods. It’s a nice touch to give the two lovers something more in common than… um… nothing. It also gives us a bit of justification for Bella not hungering for blood when she becomes a newborn vampire in book 4 (oops, spoiler warning) – you know, other than her being perfect.
Now, let me take a moment to post a DISCLAIMER:
I have nothing against vegetarians (unlike Hippies) or anyone with any dietary restrictions. Whether for health, personal taste, or religious obligations, what you eat is your business.
But making it all about ethics…
A novel can’t tell you everything about characters’ lives, covering every bathroom break and trip to the drugstore. So I propose that one of the things left out of the Twilight books and the movie is that Edward and Bella took a night class at a college nestled in the pines on the outskirts of Forks. The class was called “The Ethics of Eating,” and I speculate the happy couple fit right in with all of the other pale, grungy students, if Edward was just a shade paler. In this class, they endeavored to articulate what the common principle is that leads to their diverging ways of practicing the ethic of vegetarianism. –pg 26
…In the interest of giving my opponent every possible advantage before I crush them, I will concede that such a scene would have been more entertaining than a lot of the book; especially if (as the essay posits later) the class knew what Edward was.
Scene 1. In Which a Reasonable Ethic is Proposed (no it isn’t)
So the first part starts out:
Edward and Bella must have insisted that ending the life of any animal, of any species, is a serious matter. You can’t kill lightly, or for just any trivial reason, but a sufficiently serious reason can give you justification. –pg 26
Keep that in mind as we jump ahead a little.
Humans don’t come first in every conceivable case. To think so would have to involve the bias in favor of humans that [Peter] Singer [a leading ethicist and champion of animals] calls “speciesism.” –pg 29
Ok, here’s a question: Why is speciesism bad? Are we living in a world now where attaching “ism” to any word makes it ipso facto bad? (if we are, watch me use it) If you’ve actually studied life and biology, you quickly figure out that every freaking living thing practices speciesism. Speciesism is a good thing; it’s pretty much the only reason humans are now in as good a position as we are where we can contemplate idiocy like this.
On what basis do we make these value discriminations? It’s a matter of dispute, but one approach is to consider what different species (or their typical members) are capable of. –pg 29
What’s true is that in each of these categories, humans do have more extensive and nuanced abilities. Of course, there are things animals are better at, too. –pg 30
Last time I was in sociology (assuming things hadn’t changed by now) there was one factor considered universal to humans that was not shared by any animal: The ability to invent symbols and assign meaning to them. Seems to me these philosophers should study outside a little more.
The issue isn’t which to save first, a human or an animal, but whether a human can kill an animal, for trivial or serious reasons.
Here’s a question for you: why animals? You, reading this right now, unless you’re a vampire, you’ve just taken a breath. Do you know how many life forms you just killed by doing that? See, by some fortune (by Divine favor or blind luck is fortune either way) this 3rd rock from the sun is teeming with life in practically every corner (but San Pedro De Atacama, Chile apparently). Unless you’re one of those people that live in a hermetically sealed bubble, you’re killing millions, if not billions of living entities doing nothing. What? Microscopic life forms don’t count in our ethical considerations? That sounds a lot like sizeism to me. Or multicelluarism.
And also, where are the questions over killing plants for serious or trivial reasons? Plants are alive too! That sounds like cell wallism to me. Or chlorophyllism. How about mobilism (the discrimination toward life that is mobile)? Damn hippies.
Oh wait, they bring up Utilitarianism. Of which…
The prime directive… is to maximize the balance of happiness over misery, taking into account all individuals who can feel happiness or misery. Animals clearly count, since they can feel these emotions. –pg 28-29
Um… really? A lot of simpler life forms don’t really demonstrate any of these abilities. Do insects? Is it ok then to consume insects like many cultures? (Those of you munching on your chocolate-covered ants while reading this may continue to do so without guilt.) Many species of fish and other seafood demonstrate very little brain power, much less happiness or misery. Can we eat them? Again, how are you even defining “happiness” and “misery” for many animals? Are you so sure that paramecium your body just eliminated wasn’t screaming from mercy from its little nucleolus?
If Bella’s reason for eating venison were merely the pleasure of taste, the loss of the dear’s future pleasures would not be offset by what she gained. But if Edward’s reason for killing a deer is survival, then the loss of a deer’s future pleasures probably is offset by what he gains, since it seems probably that his life is packed with more pleasure than a deer’s. –pg 29
Yes… being immortal means you have infinite potential pleasure, which means you have a Utilitarian right to kill ANYTHING mortal.
Speaking of which, what if the deer is injured or old? They’re not going to live very long, so wouldn’t Bella’s pleasure then offset the deer’s maximum possible remaining pleasure? (Especially considering how much delicious meat you can get from one of those.) Just imagine Bella raising her hunting rifle then lowering it upon the above reflection… only to have a wolf pack (no not that one) suddenly pounce and devour the deer. Also, I will weigh the joy of bacon against a pig’s lifetime of happiness any day.
But Utilitarianism is a moral theory with a variety of serious problems.
Oh, well no kidding.
So let’s get back to the question about the deer’s rights: Do they magically switch on and off depending on a prospective hunter’s reasons for killing? …To have rights is merely for there to be limits on how you can be treated, due to your own nature. To have rights is not to be a mere thing, to be stepped on, chopped up, punched or pureed to the satisfaction of others. –pg 29
Hmm… I wonder if they’re going to explain why some life should have rights and others not.
To my mind [Immanuel] Kant [we can do literally anything to animals] and Tom Regan [the same respect is owed to every “subject of a life”] are both wrong. It’s more plausible that respect is the proper response to many things – sheer consciousness, intelligence, reflectiveness, the sense of self, artistic ability, athletic ability, the capacity for morality, to name a few. But some individuals have more respect-worthy traits than others. –pg 30
Well, actually speciesism is more plausible, but this isn’t that bad. Certainly, we wouldn’t want to eat dogs who are useful to us and demonstrate great capacity but fish and cows (nature’s ‘filler’) would be most eatable.
Bella may like the taste of venison, but is that a strong reason to end the life of a deer? Well, would it cost Bella any self-respect to forgo it? Would she feel diminished? I should think not. –pg 30
Actually… if Bella is not keeping up her protein, YES! Yes she would be diminished. Of course, there are a lot of animals out there in the world; would it be perhaps preferable to eat some but not others? The book doesn’t really go into this. Nor does it address the question of, what would happen if we bred the “respect-worthy” traits out of a food source (like cattle). Would it be ok to eat them then? Who cares? It’s on to…
Scene 2. In Which a Classmate Brings Up an Unpleasant Scenario
First, an observation about the Twilight series. Isn’t it convenient that Edward cannot survive without a blood meal but doesn’t specifically need to suck the blood of a human being? …Had the story been told that way, the books wouldn’t have been so successful, but they’d be awfully interesting, from an ethical point of view. –pg 31
No, they would be interesting PERIOD. A world ruled by the meyerpires, perhaps where criminals (as punishment) and the elderly are consumed. Those humans who demonstrate particular skill and usefulness are given immortality to continue working. Just imagine it! A world where Newton and Einstein were both vampires, continuing to work on unlocking the secrets of the universe…
Would an Edward who needs to consume human blood be able to defend the traditional vampire diet in terms of our rights being overridable? –pg 31
The following paragraph goes on way too long discussing the whole “vampires are immortal” (as if we need to go over it) and the next one talks about all the fantastic vampire abilities. Man, according to all these, vamps have every right to eat us as they are much more respect worthy than we are.
But this doesn’t sound right. –pg 31
Well no shit!
Surely it’s a far more problematic thing for a man-eating Edward to kill one of us than for a vegetarian Edward to eat a deer. Isn’t it? –pg 32
Well, I certainly think so, but then I’m just a knuckle-dragging speciesist. After all, many animals make efforts to defend themselves from us (as they should) so it’s perfectly logical for us to defend our own species from predators. You know… something we’ve been doing pretty much from the beginning.
Anyway, what follows is a long discussion on the “social contract” theory and talk about natural rights. Now, I will agree that there is something to the social contract idea, especially for someone like the Cullens. If they want to join human society, they have to play by human rules (not eating us). Of course, if the world was run by the meyerpires, this whole point would be sort of ruined since this time it’s the humans who must play by the meyerpire’s rules.
Well, in this section is this headache inducing passage:
As humans have natural rights even in the state of nature, it makes sense to think animals do, too. …At the very least, we must leave animals alone to live their lives, unless we have very good reasons to intrude and use an animal for our purposes. –pg 33
My dad used to tell me, “Never piss on the electric fence.” But what he’d say which was relevant to this article is: “Don’t expect a bull not to charge just because you’re a vegetarian.” The moral obviously being: “Life isn’t fair.” But then, why does a bull charge whether you are planning to eat him or not? Because animals are extremely territorial. They don’t “leave each other alone” to live their lives if their territories cross. If you try hanging out in the wild for very long, you’ll learn they’re not going to leave you alone either. Where do these “natural rights” come from anyway? Did you build a shelter? (the first goal of survival) You just disturbed some animal’s territory. Did you plant a crop or take some wild fruit to eat? You just took food that another animal could have eaten. Tell me, why is taking food from the deer somehow more merciful than actually eating the deer? (Especially since you’ve just condemned it to the slow, painful death of starvation, rather than the usually quicker murder.) And again, that’s just the obvious consequences we can see. There’s still countless other life that you’re intruding upon just by being alive.
The problem with all of this is that most ethics – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc – are at least theoretically possible to live a life consistent with them. It might be very hard, but it is at least logically possible. These ethics are logically impossible. Until science invents a human that can run on chlorophyll (then hey, green-skinned babes!), and we all go move to the moon, sealed in sterile bubbles, you just can’t live by these ethics. Let’s face it: speciesism makes things a lot simpler and logical.
That’s even ignoring the fact that livestock might be better off in the first place. Seriously, what would a cow do in the wild? Eat, sleep, fuck, die. What does a cow do on a farm? Eat, sleep, fuck, die. The only difference is deaths in the wild are usually a lot more painful than those in a meat processing plant. And considering that the livestock get free medical treatment I’d say they’re a hell of a lot better off being interfered with. But oh, we’ll come back to this later in the book…
The chapter continues on to:
Scene 3. In Which Edward Says No to the Kosher Option
Some attentive student is bound to press Edward on this: “Who says you must kill animals for food? You can’t survive without a blood meal, but that doesn’t mean you need to kill animals. You could partially drain the blood of a couple of deer, and let them all survive!” –pg 34-35
Yeah, that student is an idiot. You see—
…The blood is necessary for his survival, but the killing is not; it’s really just a strong preference. –pg 35
Shut up author! You’re an idiot too! See, in Meyerworld, only partially drinking a human is how you change one, the venom alters them. What do you suppose would happen if a vamp only partially drunk a deer? (though vampiric deer would also improve the story) Also, do you know how much blood a human can lose and survive adequately? Do you know how much a deer can? And if you’ve ever noticed an animal dying, they tend to thrash around a lot. Which means if Edward just tried drinking a bit then letting it go, the thing would probably get itself killed fighting him during the process or breaking a leg (then dying from that anyway). Assuming he somehow got around all that Ed would have to make sure to bandage the deer, but then like all blood-sucking creatures, meyerpire venom MUST be an anti-coagulant which means the deer is going to bleed to death anyway. Shut up you hippie!
In the Twilight cosmos, bad things happen to partially drained animals. -pg 35
Oh.
Well I’m still counting this as a fail because it’s not just the freakin’ Twilight cosmos, it’s our cosmos as well!
Anyway, for a page there is talk about the Cullens visiting a Kosher butcher and buying blood off him from his work and… there’s not really much a talk there. The author assumes that meyerpires are really ‘fond’ of killing or something; that it’s very much a part of their culture. Killing animals is “central to [Ed’s] survival as the individual he is”. Well, I guess it’s a good thing killing humans isn’t a part of his culture. Anyway, the book speeds along to it’s haphazard conclusion:
Can we go on killing animals to provide the turkey that’s central for Thanksgiving, the hot dogs that are part of watching a baseball game, the lobster that makes a trip to Maine a trip to Maine? Can we kill just to perpetuate the lifestyle and the relationship to nature we’re accustomed to? Can we kill for any reason short of survival?
Hey, animals kill for reasons other than survival. And lobsters are pretty low on the brain-power scale, why can’t we eat them? They don’t seem to have many respect-worthy traits. How many plants died for your salad? How much life did you kill just while you were sleeping? Why is it wrong to kill 1 pig for bacon but not to harvest acres of wheat for bread? Why is ok for Edward to kill if it’s a part of his culture but Thanksgiving, ball games and Maine are apparently not ok to kill for even though they are a part of ours? Ball game hot dogs are essential to my survival as the individual I am! (see? the game’s easy to play)
We need to be wary of rationalizations that masquerade as deep, existential reasons, but it’s fair to say there are difficult questions here. Once it’s granted that ending a life is a serious matter, we do need to discuss what counts as a good enough reason. -pg 36
Yeah, even if that’s granted, we still have to figure out what life counts as a serious matter and what doesn’t, why your discrimination is ok but mine isn’t.
I have only a thousand words to say to this chapter:
1. Hint: It was not the very first or very last page of the chapter.
TANGENT ALERT: William Briggs has done 2 recent blog posts on “What Philosophers Believe” here and here. It’s pretty entertaining and watch for me to start making references to them in these articles.
dragonarya on 6 April 2010, 12:38 said:
Well, in this section is this headache inducing passage:
Actually, the whole thing is. I’m not getting it… Maybe because my mind is still full of geometry postulates, but I think the author is just rambling on pointless things. That picture says it all.
And Nate, you’re not going to catch me with Tv Tropes this time! My resilience to its allure is becoming stronger!
Nate Winchester on 6 April 2010, 12:47 said:
Ah… geometry postulates… how I wish I was working on those. This was essentially a chapter debating animal rights and whether we should all be vegetarians. I could have probably written a book just arguing with this chapter, as it was I tried to keep the rage to just 6 pages. However, I do believe in playing fair, so anyone can feel free to ask for clarifications and I’ll answer or quote longer passages from the book.
Hey, like all good writers I’m just linking my sources. ;-)
dragonarya on 6 April 2010, 14:01 said:
This was essentially a chapter debating animal rights and whether we should all be vegetarians.
Which seems to be only distantly related to Twilight in my mind… Soapboxing much?
How do you do block quotes, by the way?
Nate Winchester on 6 April 2010, 14:09 said:
You talking to me or them? ;-)
Put a “bq. “ in front of what you want to quote (yes, even the space) and make sure there are carriage returns before and after the section you’re quoting.
Snow White Queen on 6 April 2010, 14:37 said:
Gahh, got ensnared in TvTropes. Thanks a bunch, Nate. Curse me and my ADD.
ZeeZee on 6 April 2010, 17:19 said:
I would totally read that.
Thebazilly on 6 April 2010, 17:21 said:
Now you’ve got me thinking about vampires giving out IQ tests to see who gets to join the ranks of super-smart immortals. Sort of like the Mensa test. Except more… vampire-y.
Nate Winchester on 6 April 2010, 17:43 said:
Which would eliminate Bella right away. XD
Of course, in my version it wouldn’t be based on IQ but actual accomplishment. So if you had a really high IQ but didn’t actually do anything with your life, they’d just let you rot. But if you invented something really useful, regardless of your IQ, they’d consider it…
NeuroticPlatypus on 6 April 2010, 19:27 said:
This reminds me of something… there was this guy talking about animal rights, back when it was a new thing. He said that it’s okay to eat them because they don’t care if they die. They aren’t afraid of death. They just care how they are treated while they are alive. By this logic, eating animals isn’t unethical, so long as they are treated well before you chop them up and make hamburgers.
/off topicness
But, he’s immortal, so what would happen if he didn’t drink blood? He wouldn’t die. He might be overrun by urges or something. Maybe he should just lock himself in an indestructible room so that he won’t be able to hurt anything. According to the philosopher’s logic, the “possible pleasure” of infinite animals would be greater than that of Edward’s, so he should just lock himself away and never eat again.
Dan Locke on 6 April 2010, 21:11 said:
On what page was all of my goodwill consumed by an inferno of hate?
Page 29?
LucyWannabe on 7 April 2010, 00:52 said:
Oh my god…this is pretty much the exact thought I had reading that first line, right down to Angel being a fave of mine.
You know…I actually read a book that had it where most vampires are people like that. Mozart was one of them. Imagine what he would have written in such a span of time…
This is exactly how the aforementioned book does things, hehe.
Oh, and someone needs to write about vampiric deer. I mean, why not? There’s legends of vampire watermelons.
falconempress on 7 April 2010, 07:51 said:
I am sorry, I could not read further than the first fw paragraphs. The stupid, oh the mind – boggling, brain – hurting stupid. Let me slap it out of you, dear author. How could you read the whole damn thing is beyond me.
dragonarya on 7 April 2010, 09:02 said:
Ehehe… you? Sorry, I was a bit out of sorts there.
Ditto.
Yay for block quotes! Thanks.
Danielle on 7 April 2010, 11:42 said:
So…Edward eats deer for survival and it’s okay, but Bella’s eating deer for pleasure isn’t? I thought Edward was immortal? If he’s going to live forever anyway, what does it matter if he eats at all? Do all vampires eat only for the pleasure of having a full stomach?
Once again, SMeyer, You Fail Logic Forever.
Snow White Queen on 7 April 2010, 13:38 said:
This doesn’t have to do with the eating conundrum, but I still don’t get why an immortal vampire guy does nothing but sit around in high school his entire immortal life.
Like seriously, was that your pinnacle of existence or something?
If you’re going to have to be immortal, you could do something beneficial with it. Be a brilliant recluse scientist or whatever, fake your death, and start all over, and invent more things to help the world.
(On that note…wouldn’t it be funny if scientific genii from different ages were actually the same person?)
dragonarya on 7 April 2010, 14:38 said:
@ Snow White Queen:
That would be so awesome.
Like Kitty said: It’s like four years of being molested with a cactus by the government.
I don’t get it either. If you’re immortal and you have all the time in the world, I guess four years is nothing, but still… who would want to?
Nate Winchester on 7 April 2010, 19:09 said:
Yes, it’s often a fault of vampire writers to never explain what happens if the titular monsters don’t drink (something I fixed in Nagasaki Moon ;-). Though as I said before, why can’t Ed be like other predators and eat elderly or injured deer?
I’ll give you bonus High Praise if you can give us the name of that story.
Aw Falconempress, you’re so sweet. ;-)
It’s all in the name of ImpishIdea! SlyShy gives me strength.
Well… High School tail…
Ok, there’s no non-creepy answer to that question.
Of course, that’s why (again) in Nagasaki Moon I made it clear that Jack was in High School to reinforce the cover for his family and he hated it.
LucyWannabe on 8 April 2010, 01:37 said:
I, Vampire by Michael Romkey. ;D
While I liked it, from what I’ve seen the book is a sort of Your Mileage May Vary kind of novel—some people I’ve talked to liked it, some don’t.
Oh, and one of the other vampires? Rasputin. RASPUTIIIIIN. And he’s one of the good guys.
steph (what is left) on 13 April 2010, 23:39 said:
The day we have to argue for human supremacy is the day that… I don’t know. Whatever, it’s come.
Didn’t his life suck before he met Bella anyway?
For an attempt at winning HighPraise!, I’m going to say page 33.