Cracking new Morrissey interview - full transcript here

[Iona Mink]

A human baby can grow up to understand what a Nazi is. A chicken can't.

Chickens don't see the world the way we do. There's no equivalence. We shouldn't be asked to pretend there is.

Don't you think there are 87 other ways for a graphic designer to communicate the horror of modern industrial chicken farming without resorting to a parallel with Auschwitz?

Let me put the question another way. Even if you really, seriously believed that KFC and Auschwitz were the same, wouldn't you realize that your target audience-- the millions of people who are basically decent, and might be persuaded to give up eating meat-- might find such a poster highly offensive and instantly turn against you? Shouldn't tactics be considered? Shock value I understand. Pissing people off is something else.

Well, you could write off the whole Jewish community as possible converts as a result of the poster. It is completely short sighted.

 

[Iona Mink]

Well, I see what you're saying, and I think you're basically correct. I think you're underestimating the pervasiveness of advertising. Smoking was a huge part of popular culture and you could argue that it became a ritual very much like Christmas or Thanksgiving. I get what you're saying, though.

Still, that doesn't mean that meat-eating can't be discussed in terms of science and rationality, rather than morality.

I agree.

And certainly Oprah tried....and failed. And if Oprah can't do it, ain't no one can do it.

 

[smiler]

Right, but you have supplied the answer, not Morrissey. "Meat Is Murder" allegedly spells out an A-B-C case for not eating meat. It doesn't. Not even close.



True, but eating an animal for its flesh, though unnecessary, is a respectable reason all the same. None of us would be here if humans hadn't eaten animals for millennia. You're making a leap to call it savage and lunatic.



You just unraveled the logic behind the song.

If you look hard enough, of course there's a reason behind every accident. What we call an accident is likely just an unexpected outcome of an intelligible chain of events.

However, there's likely to be a reason behind killing a chicken for dinner, too. Reasons abound. Nothing, not even the wholesale, cruel slaughter of chickens, is without reason.

Yes, the point that one doesn't have to eat meat is well taken. I get that and totally agree. Veggies can be enough. My point, from the beginning, has been this: Morrissey does not make this argument in the song. He might be implying it, but as you say above you have to interpret this using context. "Meat Is Murder" does not make an intelligent argument. It has logical holes you can drive a tour bus through. Sure, like you, I can put the pieces together and understand what Morrissey is trying to say. But that's just it, I don't want to have to do that. I'm being hit over the head with a blunt instrument-- I demand better.

it is a song and a slogan perhaps his most effective slogan, (it has consistantly made people stop and think and sometime reconsider) it isn't an manifesto, i think you are applying logic mistakenly to the poetic

 

[smiler]

A human baby can grow up to understand what a Nazi is. A chicken can't.

Chickens don't see the world the way we do. There's no equivalence. We shouldn't be asked to pretend there is.

Don't you think there are 87 other ways for a graphic designer to communicate the horror of modern industrial chicken farming without resorting to a parallel with Auschwitz?

Let me put the question another way. Even if you really, seriously believed that KFC and Auschwitz were the same, wouldn't you realize that your target audience-- the millions of people who are basically decent, and might be persuaded to give up eating meat-- might find such a poster highly offensive and instantly turn against you? Shouldn't tactics be considered? Shock value I understand. Pissing people off is something else.

What if a human is born impaired lets say they will always be incapable of communication and are retarded to the extent that they would never be "self concious" is there life of less value?

Part of being shocked is being pissed off

 

[smiler]

Well, you could write off the whole Jewish community as possible converts as a result of the poster. It is completely short sighted.

do you speak on behalf of the jewish now?

 

[Worm]

it is a song and a slogan perhaps his most effective slogan, (it has consistantly made people stop and think and sometime reconsider) it isn't an manifesto, i think you are applying logic mistakenly to the poetic

Oh, I completely allow that! As I said above, it's a brilliant slogan and works well on T-shirts and suchlike. The feeling of "Meat Is Murder" is unforgettable. It leaves a big impression. It accomplishes what it's trying to accomplish.

I think what started this debate was the comment about Auschwitz in the interview, though, and that's not poetry. You can say it's hyperbole, sure, and we all know he likes to make brash overstatements. But he's making an argument, a specific logical argument, which is that we should think of animal slaughter and death camps as being the same thing. He is appealing to us on a logical level. Quite specifically. This is not a vague analogy he's making. In the song, he mixes logic with poetry, but the interview statement is an attempt to make an argument. I brought up the song as an example of how I've always found his rational justification for vegetarianism wanting, and this latest quote only reinforces that judgment.

 

[Worm]

I agree.

And certainly Oprah tried....and failed. And if Oprah can't do it, ain't no one can do it.

Google could do it. Imagine if Google found various ways of promoting vegetarianism-- it would become an unstoppable force.

Search: "Steak house in Leeds"

Result: DID YOU MEAN "FARMER'S MARKET"? 12,881 results found.

 

[Iona Mink]

do you speak on behalf of the jewish now?

Yes. Yes I do.

 

[Iona Mink]

Google could do it. Imagine if Google found various ways of promoting vegetarianism-- it would become an unstoppable force.

Search: "Steak house in Leeds"

Result: DID YOU MEAN "FARMER'S MARKET"? 12,881 results found.

I think you're overestimating the power of Google. Two words; Google Plus.

 

[Deleted member 1074]

Yes. Yes I do.

Shouldn't you be speaking Yiddish then?

 

[Worm]

What if a human is born impaired lets say they will always be incapable of communication and are retarded to the extent that they would never be "self concious" is there life of less value?

Yes, because in most cases it's not completely certain that an impaired human is truly incapable of higher consciousness. Where there is doubt, the value of such a person's life is the same as mine.

If one pig, just one pig, were to scratch "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in the dirt of its pen, I would forever forswear pork.

Part of being shocked is being pissed off

Yes, but the idea is to be shocked and then see the matter in a new light. When their shock dies out, most people are going to direct their anger at PETA, not chicken farmers. Good advertising doesn't do that. I know. I watch "Mad Men".

 

[Iona Mink]

Shouldn't you be speaking Yiddish then?

Wait until I have a few more glasses of wine.

 

[smiler]

You make a valid case, but there's a flaw: a chicken is not a self-aware, sentient being in the same way a human being is. A chicken has a will to live. A person has a will to live. Both are animals, after all. Both have a brute will to go on existing.

However, a person possesses a higher consciousness. (I'm not talking about anything metaphysical, like a soul; science accounts for higher consciousness in evolutionary theory.) The alien species which visits Earth would see this; in fact, your alien analogy would prove my point, because an alien race would see that a cow and a chicken are nothing like a human from the perspective of a higher consciousness. An itinerant alien vessel, full of curious scientists (like "E.T."), would have visited many planets in many galaxies and would well understand the difference between living things which possess a higher consciousness and living things which do not. If you'll excuse the expression, for our hypothetical aliens the pecking order would be obvious: chickens at the bottom, then humans, then their advanced alien race. They would see this just as we see both grass and chickens as alive, but alive on different planes of existence. Our aliens might choose to colonize us anyway, since our species is stupid, barbaric and primitive, not to mention suicidal, but I doubt they'd see it as equal to harvesting chicken nuggets.

You can argue that I have no knowledge of what a chicken thinks about its own life. Get back to me when a chicken writes "Anna Karenin" or the Fifth Symphony.

Now, I think it's perfectly possible to argue that all life is sacred, as Buddhists do. I don't happen to agree, completely, but that line of thought, to me, is perfectly valid. But to say "all life is sacred, we must not wantonly kill" is much, much different than "KFC is the Holocaust".

Some animals are self aware - they can for example recognise themselves in a mirror. Lets take apes as an example, they have DNA which is very close to ours, the only clear difference being our use of language and tools, but according to you this small difference morally allows you to kill the ape to eat it when you are surrounded by other food. it doesn't take much of an imagination to consider an alien creature that is as far away (in terms of development) from us as we are to apes or even as far away from us as chickens are to us. Given that the alien considers itself to be "on a higher plain" is it justified in killing us just because we might taste nice?

 

[Uncleskinny]

This thread, tonight, shows, to me at least, what a brilliant platform we have for chat/discussion/debate.

I love it.

P.

 

[Deleted member 1074]

Wait until I have a few more glasses of wine.

I was already waiting for that...but for different reasons.

 

[smiler]

Yes, because in most cases it's not completely certain that an impaired human is truly incapable of higher consciousness. Where there is doubt, the value of such a person's life is the same as mine.

If one pig, just one pig, were to scratch "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in the dirt of its pen, I would forever forswear pork.

Yes, but the idea is to be shocked and then see the matter in a new light. When their shock dies out, most people are going to direct their anger at PETA, not chicken farmers. Good advertising doesn't do that. I know. I watch "Mad Men".

Then your criteria is wrong and a little strange. most birds can fly unaided - pretty impressive stuff, when you learn to fly unaided you can start looking down your nose at birds. Writing isn't all that important or impressive in the big scheme of things. Human will probably come and go in the blink of an eye compare to other species, longevity as a achievement beats "stuff".

 

[smiler]

This thread, tonight, shows, to me at least, what a brilliant platform we have for chat/discussion/debate.

I love it.

P.

seems Morrissey's statement did not go unnoticed after all. yes it can be good when name calling and trolling is absent.

 

[Worm]

Some animals are self aware - they can for example recognise themselves in a mirror. Lets take apes as an example, they have DNA which is very close to ours, the only clear difference being our use of language and tools, but according to you this small difference morally allows you to kill the ape to eat it when you are surrounded by other food. it doesn't take much of an imagination to consider an alien creature that is as far away (in terms of development) from us as we are to apes or even as far away from us as chickens are to us. Given that the alien considers itself to be "on a higher plain" is it justified in killing us just because we might taste nice?

I grant you, I don't see apes the same way I see chickens. And I don't eat apes. And why is this starting to feel like the conversation between Jules and Vincent in "Pulp Fiction"?

The rhetorical strategy of arguing that animals may be like humans goes the other way, too. For example, bringing up the fact that dolphins like playing in groups, just like children, can be taken as a sign that dolphins have a higher consciousness, yes, but it can just as easily be taken as an example of the way human beings are like animals. I'm not in the least bit surprised that various animals display characteristics normally associated with human beings. Why wouldn't they? We developed consciousness as an evolutionary benefit, so why be shocked if a beaver builds a house or a parakeet falls in love with a muskrat? There are bound to be oddities; they're not actually oddities, but serve a purpose of some kind or another.

Besides, if you want to go down that path, what about insects that sting their prey, keep them paralyzed while they plant eggs inside their carcass, and then let them suffer and die while the new insects hatch? Isn't that tantamount to harvesting chickens for meat in horrifyingly cruel conditions?

In any case, I think I would suggest that any animal that had developed a form of consciousness sufficient to recognize the concept of cruelty is automatically raised to that higher level.

If our hypothetical alien is as far above us as we are from apes, then we're expanding the discussion into an entirely different realm, one in which any sense of morality goes away. It's like imagining a universe in which the laws of gravity don't hold up. Such a place might exist, but what's the point of debating it? The fact remains that in our sense of right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral, an alien would spot the difference between humans and the rest of the life on this planet, merely on the level of taxology. They might eat us anyway, but we'll never know why-- meaning that the purpose of drawing an analogy to a race of aliens immediately loses its value in our conversation.

 

[Uncleskinny]

seems Morrissey's statement did not go unnoticed after all. yes it can be good when name calling and trolling is absent.

Err, no, I still think the man is an arse for saying what he did. Yes, it didn't go unnoticed, but if the rationale is that it provoked a response and a good chat, then well done.

P.

P.S Name calling and trolling - "f*** Morrissey-Solo.com"

 

[smiler]

Yes, because in most cases it's not completely certain that an impaired human is truly incapable of higher consciousness. Where there is doubt, the value of such a person's life is the same as mine.

If one pig, just one pig, were to scratch "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in the dirt of its pen, I would forever forswear pork.

Yes, but the idea is to be shocked and then see the matter in a new light. When their shock dies out, most people are going to direct their anger at PETA, not chicken farmers. Good advertising doesn't do that. I know. I watch "Mad Men".

Lets say we invent a machine that can tell us without doubt that the child is going to be incapable of higher consciousness, but definately still alive. Would it be okay to see if that child tastes nice with mint sauce (just incase)