The way they met at the picnic was awkward because he had a dead chicken's leg in his mouth and she was wearing a Smiths t-shirt that read "Meat is Murder". They looked at each other as if they already knew what was coming. He was a friend of her boyfriend, with whom she came to the picnic, and her boyfriend duly introduced them to each other. He too seemed aware of what was coming because he immediately tried to start a conversation about something neither the meat eater nor the Meat is Murder-er paid any attention to.
"Excuse me while I dispose of this incriminating evidence," said the meat eater, referring to his plate full of chicken bones. It was a probing attempt at humor, not without the hint of a challenge. He looked for a sign of outrage on the Meat is Murder-er's face, but was disappointed when he saw that she was looking at her phone.
Her boyfriend said something about the weather and then quickly asked the meat eater whether he'd gone to that party on Thursday. The meat eater was about to answer him when the Meat is Murder-er gave a belated response to the meat eater's comment, saying:
"By all means, as long as you're not asking me to be an accessory to the crime."
The meat eater felt the swell of indignation in his chest, the sudden constriction in his throat, the almost instantaneous release of adrenaline as his body unmistakably geared up for a challenge. The fact that she'd said it without even glancing up from her phone made him feel even feistier.
The boyfriend of the Meat is Murder-er gave an expression of passive acceptance, as if it had been foolhardy to hope it wouldn't come to this. This kind of situation was obviously not new to him.
"How exactly is this a crime?" said the meat eater, holding his plate full of bones up for all of them to see.
"It's a crime because you're eating another sentient being that was kept in cruel conditions and butchered for your pleasure. That doesn't sound like a crime to you?"
"Sentient being? A chicken?"
"Yeah, sentient being, with a brain and nervous system."
"How do you know these aren't free range?"
"Gimme a break, all 'free range' means is that they open a door in their concentration camp once a day which the chickens may or may not go through... usually not."
"Ok, I agree their conditions have to be better, same with cows and sheep and pigs, no unnecessary pain, humane treatment and all that, but you seem to be saying that eating meat is murder, full stop."
"Yes, it is."
"But animals all eat meat. How could something that comes natural to carnivores and omnivores - like us - be considered a crime?"
"Because we as humans know better. We have consciences. We also know now that we don't need meat in our diet, we can get every nutrient we need from a vegetarian diet."
"I doubt that's true. Apparently the quality of proteins in red meat can't be found anywhere else. Also I read that the consumption of meat - and the invention of fire to cook it with - might have been a major factor in the evolution of the human species."
"Even if that's true, we've now mastered our environment to the point where science and agriculture enable us to grow and attain all the nutrients we need without having to hunt mammoth or bison or something like we used to."
"So then it's ok to eat plants? Aren't you killing plants just the same way?"
"They're not sentient beings."
"Ha! How do you know?"
"Because they don't have a nervous system."
"Maybe they feel and live and experience pain in a different way? Research seems to show that plants' root ends seem to function in a similar way to neurons. Think of that next time you're gnashing a carrot to death with your teeth."
"Please, a pig knows when it is going to die, a pig feels pain, it feels depression, it experiences fear, it has a body like ours. An eggplant doesn't."
"Again, we don't know how a plant experiences life and death, because it's such a different organism, but regardless of pain, isn't it just as much a killing when you rip a plant out of the ground and eat it?"
"Well, what are you going to do, starve?"
"Why does your ethics only cover beings similar to us and not others? Why not mushrooms? Plants? Just because animals are alive the way we are alive, with movement, with faces and limbs and blood and bones, why does that mean they have more of a right to live?"
"Look, plants aren't kept in cruel conditions, plants aren't stuffed into concentration camps."
"How do you know plants don't feel the same way about being in hothouses? Or pots?"
"Because they don't 'feel', that's why."
"I find you to be taxonomically elitist."
"On the contrary, I believe all beings are one, all beings are equal, all beings must be treated with compassion. That's why I believe killing another being is wrong."
"Except plants."
"Ok, killing another being unnecessarily is wrong."
"I find you to be a hypocrite."
"Me? A hypocrite? Please enlighten me, how am I a hypocrite?"
"You say beings are all equal, and yet you know that other animals do not have the capacity for ethical action the way humans do. Leopards kill gazelle, lions kill zebra, dolphins kill fish. Yet because humans have a developed conscience, they can take ethical action and choose to not eat meat. But as you well know, a leopard and a lion and a crocodile etc. have all evolved to eat meat. Hence their teeth and claws and muscles and jaws and whole organic structure. So obviously nature doesn't have the same such ethical considerations as you. In nature, there is no good or bad, right or wrong. But by taking what is in this case an 'anti-natural' ethical stance, you are assuming that you, the ethical non-meat-eating human, are above nature and above the lowly animals who are too dumb or unevolved to know any better. So in short, your ethics is undermined by the very belief it is founded on, and the belief you found your ethics on is in turn undermined by your ethics."
"Oh come on, I'm not saying a leopard is wrong for eating meat or that humans are better for not eating meat. I'm saying that we as humans have a sense of right and wrong, of ethics. We're responsible for our deeds, because we're the only organisms - as far as we know - that knows that it knows, hence Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We're the only being that is conscious of its existence, the only being for whom Being is an issue, unlike an animal, which just is. That's why, because we have evolved to this point, we have a responsibility to do the right thing. And the right thing is not to unnecessarily harm or kill another being."
"In other words, we're better than animals? We're better than nature? Therefore we take an ethical stand which for some reason no other creature does. We abstain from killing. And yet every other organism has no compunction about killing. Also, we crave and love fat - especially, and above all, animal fat. Why? Because we've evolved as meat eaters. We need it, we love it. The amount and quality of protein a cow provides is priceless. One kill and we have a ton of it. Cook it with fire and you ease its digestion greatly. The brain is provided with the protein it desperately needs, we don't waste all that time and energy digesting raw meat, we have nutrition and time for other things - agriculture even - and BAM, we evolve into what we are today. That's why animal fat tastes so good, that's why red meat tastes so good. Because without it, we wouldn't have become human beings. Yet you now tell us that that which made us what we are is an evil and cruel thing? That ethical stance sounds like the definition of evolutionary degeneration."
"First of all that whole 'red meat made us evolve' hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis."
"Even if I grant you that, it doesn't change the fact that your ethics is hypocritical from a purely logical standpoint. You say killing for meat is cruel because all beings are one and intertwined, and yet only humans can take that ethical stance because they have evolved to the point where they know right and wrong and are thus different and, in a sense, above the other beings. So by mere virtue of that fact that humans can moralize at all discredits your hypothesis that all beings are one or intertwined in anything but a biological sense. It seems that humans and animals inhabit wholly different experiential realms of consciousness."
"I am not saying humans are 'above' other animals, just that they're different!"
"Oh, so then if humans aren't above, they don't have any ethical or moral high ground, in which case whether eating meat is considered right or wrong is irrelevant to nature, and therefore the eating of or abstention from meat makes no difference to anything because it's all morally relative, or rather morally neutral. So whether you abstain or not, a leopard will still have no compunction about ripping a baby gazelle's throat open and eating it alive. What difference does it make whether you do the same thing or not?"
"Because I'm not a leopard, I'm a human being. I, as a human, know I must not do that, that it is cruel, that it is unnecessary, and that it is above all else, WRONG!"
"Ah, so it is 'above' all else!"
"It's a figure of speech."
"A very apt one considering the circumstances. Why are we so squeamish about pain anyway? It seems to be a natural part of life."
"Giving unnecessary pain isn't natural."
"Well then why don't hyenas, say, kill their prey first rather than just start eating their innards even while the animal is still alive and no doubt going through excruciating pain?"
"Whatever, if you don't want to act any better than a hyena, that's your prerogative..."
"Aha, so you admit you ARE better than a hyena! You admit superiority! You admit you do the right thing and all the other animals, nature itself, acts wrongly!"
"No, that's not what I meant, I meant I am not a hyena. That's fine for a hyena, but not for a human being such as myself, and, supposedly, yourself."
"Ok never mind."
"Why don't you just go and throw that plate of bones away."
"I was just about to. I think I'll get a burger. Want one?"
"No."
