Overcoming Nature Part II: Attraction and Marriage

Let's think primitively about the initial stages of love (and some of the mechanisms of attraction):

Step 1: Woman makes herself attractive (tight clothes, short skirts, make up, cleavage).

Step 2: Man is attracted, chases woman, makes himself attractive (dates, confidence, humor, pheromones(?)).

If attraction is developed by both parties in the initial stages of a relationship, much deeper and significant things happen. They discover common interests and passions. They develop trust and companionship. They find intimacy and love. You know, it gets all Disney and shit. (Well, not for long, some will argue.)

My beef with modern culture -- and one of the ways in which modern culture does not differ from the natural model -- is that we still play this simple game. I'm not saying that this 'game' is necessarily bad -- I'm just saying that this game can be played better.

Some degree of minimal attraction is necessary in order to tumble down the rabbit hole of love, but not much. We can be more strategic about the things we value in others from those initial points of attraction. Shouldn't men be chasing women with traits that are 'good' but outside the realm of biological attraction? Shouldn't women? Maybe it already is.

Also, the model itself can be -- and is -- manipulated at its most basic (e.g. man makes himself attractive, woman chases man). At some point, there must be attraction and an agent, someone who makes moves.

'Playing' this game all depends on individual goals. Men wanting sex will play a different strategy than men wanting marriage, for instance. And women wanting sex will...get it no matter the strategy it seems.

What has been called the 'cult of monogamy' is certainly at odds with human nature. We seem to be good at attracting and reproducing, bad at sticking it out 'til death (marriage). To some degree, there is a sense of duty and obligation to lover, family, community, and/or society that may transcend the natural compulsions of others or even some in the 'cult of monogamy' beyond religious indoctrination; that is, 'I owe it to society to stick this boring marriage out and raise this family in a stable household'. So then, why not? Why not choose the path to societal stability?

Boredom, for one. If the meaning of life is a healthy society, I might yawn while sort of agreeing. But can't that just be one goal among many? Is it even possible to balance the natural compulsions of the human animal with the communal obligation of the human being? Maybe we have already.

The modern 'cult of serial monogamy plus paramour' seems to match the ancient 'evolutionary model' to a surprising degree. Can it be that, for many, our natural compulsions are simply too strong to withstand? Has society evolved its norms and conventions in the direction of nature, all thanks to feminism?

I'll let you answer that.

The Detriment of Sentiment

Let's get deep for a moment.

Out of stardust, life sprang, and our planet developed into dynamic, beautiful, interconnected ecologies. From stardust arose consciousness, emotion, the things that make life precious. That blows my mind, and is the underlying framework for why I love animals so.

I spent last weekend touring some of the farm country of Carolina, meeting the farmers who articulated more like scientists, but most notably, meeting the healthy, lovable animals that I had been eating. I met them face to face, and I wallowed in how cute the pigs were piled together comfortably in the dirt, and I saw beauty in the subtle colorations of turkey feathers, and I melted when I pet the soft coat of the baby goats, and I lingered near the chicken coop to hear the young chicks chirp out their song.

In those warm moments, never before had I been so sure that killing and eating animals was the right, just, and responsible thing to do. Because none of those animals would be there if I didn't.

At one farm, they were barbecuing lamb sausage near the pen where the live sheep were held. The irony was deafening, and even uncomfortable, to look out at the cuddly creatures while enjoying a lamb sausage. A child among us was quite vocal about her discomfort, and a couple in our party chose not to partake in the "World's Best Lamb." Understandably so.

We are not immune to sentiment. Killing is a brutal thing no matter the method. But feelings betray us.

We live on a planet where lifeforms must kill and consume other lifeforms in order to survive. This is the dark, beautiful, universal truth of the world. Whether grains from an unsustainable factory farm or animals from a real farm, we must kill and consume other lifeforms.

On the real farm, those animals were born to be eaten. To not eat them is to abort them, and to eat them is to give them the gift of life. It's a mutually beneficial ecological relationship.

I watched those pigs relish rolling in the dirt. They would stick their snout in the feeder and make that cough-sneeze sound and then waddle to the shade and collapse there. I saw the dogs run playfully through the rows of vegetables, yapping at the other animals. The ducklings circled each other in a dark puddle, keeping their brothers and sisters near. Their mother had black speckles evenly spaced throughout her rich brown feathers. The father wore a white necklace and a turquoise sheen glowed from under his black chest. They were family.

Tragic to think they would have never been born at all.

Undeniably Sustainable Animal Foods

I'm so sick of hearing the oversimplified argument that 'meat is bad for the environment'. Here are three whole categories of food that either promote ecological health or have a neutral effect. (Be sure to account for the benefit of excluding unsustainable grain production.)

1. Regenerative organic husbandry, like pastured beef (read this Guardian piece)

2. Overpopulated species, like deer and rabbit (read this post)

3. Alternative protein, like insects (watch this TED talk)

Further reading:

Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Simon Fairlie

The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith

Saprotrophs, Apex Predators, and the Circle of Life

Plants eat sunlight. Herbivores eat plants. Carnivores eat herbivores. And saprotrophs eat everything. They are the decomposers, the living things that consume dead organic matter. They are earthworms, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. They are what complete the ignoble Circle of Life.

Please excuse my simple illustration of the delicate complexity of nature, but hey -- at least it's not as simple as yin and yang. Anyway, the moral discourse begins and ends with the ecosystem, so we have to speak in terms that everyone understands.

The apex predator (lion, bear, human) plays an integral role in the balance of an ecosystem. In particular, they control prey species' population dynamics, the impact of which ripples down to the level of plant ecology.

Ecological systems are naturally self-balancing, but they can be dynamic. Even without human interference, plant and animal species can still disappear due to changing climate, changing food sources, competing species, etc. Oddly, the very chaos and dynamism of nature is the 'balance' that sounds so warm and fuzzy off the tongue.

But just because nature is dynamic does not mean that we should sit at the sidelines. There are ecological principles that will bolster entire ecosystems in a way that increases net life -- that is, more lifeforms at all levels, all giving and taking within a robust circle of life.

Organic farming is one great example. But to understand organic farming, we need to first understand industrial farming (where you get you're grains).

Industrial farming first wipes out all life from the given plot of land. Including bacteria. Then, they plant a crop that is genetically altered to tolerate a specific herbicide/pesticide that will continue killing all life on that plot of land, until... Boom. You got grains. So you cut 'em down utilizing cheap labor (migrant illegal labor), ship it across the country on a big truck with a huge engine, and sell them to unsuspecting customers. This is great for grain prices, but bad for human health and the environment.

On the other hand, organic farming uses manure and compost to naturally create nutrient-rich soil that grows healthy vegetables. It uses biological pest control to control pests. Lastly, it's sold locally so it doesn't spoil or make a big carbon footprint. The end result is more lifeforms, no toxins, and better health.

So what about animals? Well, harmony in nature cannot be achieved without predation, and human beings are ancient apex predators. We rely on animals for a complete array of fats and proteins, and it is our duty to participate in this vast, interconnected ecosystem. It only makes sense to hunt overpopulated species and protect endangered ones, and to farm in a way that promotes life at all levels, where each animal lives healthily and happily, and in turn provides nourishment to the next member of the food chain. Pain on an individual level pales in comparison to life on a comprehensive level.

Food Ethics: Sense and Sentience

Sentience refers to the ability of an entity to have subjective perceptual experiences. It is distinct from consciousness, which covers the mind and thought. Why is this important?

In animal rights philosophy, sentience means that animals have the ability to experience pleasure and pain. They feel pain, therefore killing and eating them is wrong. The problem is that scientists consider plants to be sentient too, since they can feel, touch, taste, smell, and respond to their environments.

Indeed, the biochemical pathways are different, but that's true of every living thing: a daffodil is not quite a venus fly trap is not quite a honey bee is not quite a goldfish is not quite an octopus is not quite alligator is not quite a monkey is not quite a human. All life (plant and animal) varies in fundamental biochemistry. The point is that plants and animals have fundamental biochemistry, and are sentient. If an animal is sentient, wrong to hurt; if a plant is sentient, wrong to hurt. Clearly, under this ethical model, we have nothing to eat.

Some vegans argue that plants are not sentient, but that would never fly with a scientist. Smarter vegans argue that plants are sentient but still unconscious, which is true, but takes the issue away from sensation and into complex neurological thought, which is just an attempt to confuse the topic. The best vegan rebuttal I found:

Even if it’s true that plants are the most sentient life on Earth, veganism would still be the minimum standard of decency. This follows from the simple fact that animals are reverse protein factories, consuming multiple times the protein in plant food that they produce in protein from their flesh and bodily fluids.

Of course, this is nonsense on multiple levels. First, animals are not just made out of protein. Second, a harmonious biotic community requires inconsistent "factories" to maintain the circle of life. Third, if animals are 'wasting' the essence of life, then the ethical thing would be to kill the animals. Clearly, this argument is flawed.

As for the idea that plants are less sentient than animals? This statement would be due to identification bias; in essence, we confuse their consciousness with their sentience and conclude that plants don't appear to be as sentient as we are. But looks can be deceiving. According to the Human Genome Project, we have about 25,000 genes -- the rice grain has twice that. Truth is: as lifeforms, we didn't evolve more. We evolved differently. Plant species exhibit vast diversity and powerful sophistication in response to and engagement with their natural environments. They can smell smoke, see sunlight, and -- you guessed it -- feel a limb get ripped off.

Pain and sentience are incomplete arenas to conduct a moral discourse. We need big picture morality, one that takes into account the health of the biotic community, weighs opportunity costs, and questions underlying assumptions.

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