Consequential alienation

This is not a research article, but just a small thought that I have been working on.

With every new set of friends that I interact with and after substantial proximity has been established, the inevitable debate always occurs, almost as though it is the natural sequence of making friends. The vegetarian debate is what I am speaking about. The same set of questions, the same set of retorts, my excruciatingly painful task of convincing them through arguments centred around biology, animal sociology (if something like that exists), anthropology, natural law and what not. The irony of it all is the fact that every time, I almost succeed in convincing my friends that meat, as it is consumed today and the institutional cruelty that is meted out to animals is unnatural, evil and definitely not sustainable but all to no avail as the unfailing response when they have run out of arguments is "I don't care, I enjoy my meat and I will continue doing so.." So, I had to change the direction of my thoughts not so much regarding whether meat eating is good or bad but more towards why are people insensitive towards the cruelty once they are exposed to it.

Then, I figured that the answer to that is not very complex and perhaps might even fall in the realm of 'common sense'. Though I did not run out in the streets nude shouting Eureka à la Archimedes, I was, however, pretty glad that I had realized it especially because of its overarching practical explanatory ability. The thing that I am alluding to is exactly what the title describes, alienation. Primarily, I am of the opinion that once people have detached themselves from the actual point of interaction where the ‘cruelty’ is taking place, they see themselves as not culpable. Notice, how the most common argument proves my point: “If I don’t eat this xxx animal, then someone else will, since it’s already killed” or some variations of the same. Think about it, if they had to kill the animal themselves, this argument just wouldn’t hold, would it? It is the ability, in the modern day economic system, to detach oneself from the actions that are done on one’s behalf that causes people to enjoy the benefits of these actions without the usually accompanying guilty feeling.

I realize that there are a few loopholes in this line of thinking and it cannot be absolutely generalized, but looking at smaller samples, it could hold true. To be more precise, it is true of the people I encounter and interact with. The first counter-argument against this is easy and let me provide that before all else: what about those who are doing the killing? According to this reasoning, shouldn’t they stop? There, there’s another Freudian defence mechanism working there, that of rationalization. Their line of reasoning would be “I am doing this for others” or “I have to do this to earn my living”, etc. It is a rather weak argument, but as of now, it’s the best response I can give. I got this idea mainly from a psychological study that I read some time back; it wanted to study the possible thoughts accompanying those who actually pulled the trigger against the Jews in the Nazi regime. The results were rather conclusive and interesting – almost all the people interviewed said that they did not feel responsible for the deaths as they were merely carrying out the orders of their superiors. So, in a twisted way, our butcher example can be seen as a parallel to the Nazi example, where Hitler is the twin of the people who just ‘order’ meat and not actually kill and the butcher is like the soldiers who just ‘took orders’.

I think it is the same with the environment: as long as people do not see a direct link between their actions and the damage it’s causing, they would be oblivious to the circumstances and thus, it would be extremely easy to shirk away from the responsibility. Imagine a person living in a big city, surrounded by the artificiality of human civilization, masking its own decadence. This person lives so far away, physically and emotionally from nature that it is impossible to connect with nature and thus, see what bearing his actions have on environmental change. Could he possibly see the connection between a simple action such as leaving his PC switched on all night or the big SUV guzzler he drives to office alone and the effect it has on the Western Ghats? It is an abstract causal relationship which is far from evident, unless internalized and indoctrinated. This is why, I feel, that consumerism is thriving today in all its glory and the other social institutions are functionally designed to keep people from realizing this relationship.

Let me now try to apply this theory to other circumstances. I am presently reading this book by Joseph Stiglitz, an outstanding economist, titled “Globalization and its discontents”. He gives an example of the fund and its handling of the Ethiopian case. The person in IMF who was ruthlessly pushing through outdated, ineffective policies, because of his dogmatic beliefs in free markets, that would affect millions of the poorest people in Ethiopia was sitting in an AC room in the IMF building on the 19^th street in Washington, who had never been to Ethiopia, could not describe what the people were going through and, I’m sure, did not know what poverty meant, apart from the official definition given by the World Bank as less than 2400 calories a day. When the policies miserably failed, he merely shrugged his shoulder and blamed it on the ineffectiveness of the policy implementation apparatus. Once, the blame is shifted, he can happily move on to the next target. I have thought of many other instances that can generally fit into this model, but it might exceed the scope of this write-up.

I am now rather convinced that people are apathetic about the moral obligations of certain actions because of their ability to intellectualize or to alienate, detach and isolate themselves from those actions that would otherwise cause anxiety and perhaps, a vague moral dilemma. My question is, which I am still uncertain about, would people still continue to engage in these if, in a hypothetical situation, they would be primarily responsible for the action. The ability to shift responsibility is the core concept that is resounding throughout this piece; and thus, my question would be, what would happen if they could not carry out the required shift? What if the responsibility stuck with them? Would they continue? To exemplify, ignoring practicality for some time, imagine a restaurant where one would have to kill their own meat, if they wanted to eat it. The restaurant would provide all the facilities, the knife, the animal, etc, then, would people still go ahead, kill the meat and eat it? I know that, with habituation, they probably might, but at first, will they? Would this serve as a strong enough reason for them not to eat meat? I wonder...