On Veganism and Natural Selection
In Chapter 6 of THE GOD DELUSION, entitled, "The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good?", Richard Dawkins provides us with "four good Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous or ‘moral’ towards each other" (219). Because they’re Darwinian reasons, they are outside of religion and any kind of "Good Book." And none of the four, by the way, specifically mentions behavior toward individuals of other species. (For me, the message is: It’s hard enough for people to be nice to people, let alone other creatures!)
Essentially, the reasons are:
- Genetic kinship (being good to your own kind and others who make your life possible/easier).
- Reciprocation (I’m do favors for you in anticipation of repayment).
- Acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness.
- Conspicuous generosity ("I’m so superior to you that I can make myself vulnerable and I can afford to help you.")
Dawkins also notes that the urge to kindness is a "misfiring," in that it "exists independently of its ultimate rationale."
Here are my three questions:
- Why, in Darwinian terms, would some of us have such a strong urge to be kind (or just) to those of another species? Natural selection doesn’t seem to be able to explain it, and in fact would support the opposite.
- Are vegans doomed because they are too kind?
- Is is possible that humans can evolve toward kindness and that kindness would be rewarded, for the sake of it?
Dawkins writes of the evolution of morality, and in some ways it does seem that we’re getting more just and more kind. But in other ways it seems we’re evolving into a more heartless, brutal species with our endless capacity to create more efficient, effective ways to kill (human animals and nonhuman animals).
Finally, there was a utility to acknowledging the personhood of African Americans (and women), but there’s no utility in doing so for nonhuman animals. There is only a moral imperative. Is that enough, or will humans only evolve morally when there’s a utility attached?
His book The Selfish Gene gives me hope regarding veganism and humanity's increased compassion in general. It's in the chapter on memes. While we are programmed to be what we are by our genes, our language and our ability to learn from each other allow for the replication of memes. Memes can take us beyond (and even allow us to rebel against) our genetic programming. I think veganism is a meme, or at least the composing values of veganism are memes. I can see the vegan memes spreading around, and I think I've become a virulent carrier myself! Hopefully they, and other compassionate memes, will continue to replicate successfully and reach critical mass.
In "The Ancestor's Tale", Richard Dawkins writes:
"Many of our legal and ethical principles depend on the separation between Homo sapiens and all other species. Of the people who regard abortion as a sin, including the minority who go to the lengths of assassinating doctors and blowing up abortion clinics, many are unthinking meat-eaters, and have no worries about chimpanzees being imprisoned in zoos and sacrificed in laboratories. Would they think again, if we could lay out a living continuum of intermediates between ourselves and chimpanzees…? Surely they would. Yet it is the merest accident that the intermediates all happen to be dead. It is only because of this accident that we can comfortably and easily imagine a huge gulf between our two species – or between any two species, for that matter."
"I suppose we should take comfort from the change that has come over our attitudes (regarding racism) during the intervening century. Perhaps in a negative sense, Hitler can take some credit for this, since nobody wants to be caught saying anything that he said. But what, I wonder, will our successors of the twenty-second century be quoting, in horror, from us? Something to do with our treatment of other species, perhaps?"
In view of the above, it is a real pity that Richard Dawkins has not taken this to its logical conclusion, and is not even a vegetarian.
He does talk about memes and the selfish gene, and you're probably right in that it is a meme. I'll have to read that book next to confirm (for me). And as for him being a veg, I think that if you're studying ethics and hypothesizing about morality–for a living–it's shocking to not eschew animal products.
Mary Martin wrote: "…it seems we're evolving into a more heartless, brutal species with our endless capacity to create more efficient, effective ways to kill (human animals and nonhuman animals)."
This reminds me of a quotation from Steven Pinker:
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In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.
In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion.
Some of the evidence has been under our nose all along. Conventional history has long shown that, in many ways, we have been getting kinder and gentler. Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution — all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. But, today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West, far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur, and widely condemned when they are brought to light.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html
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It's interesting that he starts with an example of animal cruelty in the sixteenth century but doesn't address the issue of animal exploitation (such as factory farming) today. Perhaps he would claim that sadism is fundamentally different from suffering caused as a by-product of economic efficiency. Anyway, I'm not necssarily in complete agreement with Pinker, but I think he does make an interesting point that's worth considering.