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Reflections on ‘The Lives of Animals’
In the morning I’m on the farm as an extra pair of hands while some young cattle are being de-horned. In the afternoon I’m reading J.M. Coetzee’s ‘The Lives of Animals’ for the first time.
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Literature and Life
When it comes to seeing things as they really are, it’s not only a matter of seeing, because you can see without recognising, if you don’t know what you’re looking at. If you want to correct this then it’s not enough to simply look: you must learn what to look for. This is why Iris Murdoch thinks it’s so important for human beings to study literature.
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Romanticism and Livestock Farming
Those who speak positively about livestock farming are often accused of having fallen into an insidious ‘Romanticism’. They view these idyllic pastoral scenes with overly-sentimental eyes, and this clouds their judgement. Is this true? If it were, it might be a problem: it is important to see things clearly – undistorted – and sentimentalism is one of the many distortions of thought that can creep in, like prejudice and other forms of bias. […]
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The Livestock Landscape
It is difficult to correct a misperception when it has become established: people tend to see what they believe, and so if they believe wrongly, they will see wrongly. I want to show you some images that I think speak for themselves. They show two different landscapes. One of these landscapes reflects the reality of growing vegetables in contemporary Europe. The other reflects the reality of livestock farming in contemporary Europe. […]
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The Environmental Impact of Beef Consumption: The Meaninglessness of the ‘Global Mean’
When statistics for the environmental impact of beef consumption are presented, they tend to be based on the ‘global mean’. This ‘global mean’ is meaningless in the UK. Two of the biggest variables in its calculation are deforestation and intensively growing crops as feed for livestock. But it’s absurd to think that these things are serious problems for beef consumption in the UK. […]
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Harvest Festival
How philosophers are treated: The people, when their bellies are full, turn to the farmers and say: ‘You have grown us food, and we are grateful, but now we are full and have no need of you.’ They will think differently when the next harvest is needed.
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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