So James Aspey travelled around Australia on a year long vow of silence to promote animal rights.
He goes on the TV magazine show "Sunrise" for his first spoken interview. Not just his first interview but its where he's promised that they'd be the TV Show where he'd break his silence FIRST. Turns out to be a big let down. Why? His credibility is now shown to be shot.
Turns out in that preceding year he broke his silence quite a few times. 5 or 6 times by his own admission. So, when he messes up and speaks does he start again each time? No, then you move ahead to a vow of silence with no "intentional" speaking. Convenient. Turns out he intentionally broke his silence anyway by whispering the name of his then newly acquired girlfriend into her ear. Start again? Nope. Press on he did, because there are schedules to meet, media engagements, no need to unfairly weigh down a stunt with something pesky and invasive like integrity.
So now James is talking again, we know what he's saying but what is of interest is he isn't saying and sadly not being asked? Simple...
Its based on the old sentience thing again. Its a term from philosophy not science. Its a twisted approach that's as twisted as the use of the term Species-ism. Again, this too comes from philosophy.
Their approach is, if you kill a fellow human being its murder, so therefore if you kill an animal it too is murder. The contention is if killing a human is murder then killing any animal is murder because if you separate the rules based on species then you're a specie-ist, a filthy rotten low down morally debauched Species-ist. However funny thing happened on the way to the debate via the jungle. The lion kills the antelope, ahh but that's not murder, that's nature...the rules of abhorrent moral transgression ONLY apply when its human to animal. When its non human animal killing non human animal the moral law is strangely not applicable. When its non human animal killing human, it also doesn't apply. Now when you see the selected application of (their) moral laws, which is based on the basis of one's species, you can easily bring up the very weird and contradictory nature of the application of the term "Species-ism" & "Species-ist". Hmmm, who's the Species-ist now???You know you're probably going to find a someone instantly adopting a vow silence on the matter.
I had an exchange with a capital "V" Vegan recently, but it wasn't James. What's a capital "V" Vegan? Lower case vegans are normal every day people going about their ordinary every day lives who just happen to fuel their body with non animal food products for a range of reasons, but they're not pushing it on others, they're just doing it. Capital "V" Vegans are of the Vegan Cult or Veganarchists. They're animal rights extremists. They can view lower case vegans as cop outs and hopeless moderates.
The thing is the poor dear gives me quite an extensive serve on why eating meat is a disgusting abomination, why it should be opposed and outlawed. Not to mention why such immoral people should hang their heads in shame. Her main point of reference was "Sentience". Again a term from philosophy but her take on it is because an animal has (sentience) awareness, can feel pleasure and pain it therefore has "inferred rights".
Interesting. "Inferred" not definite, just suggested or inferred. Here we have a moral law without the moral law giver. I could have pressed her down the "who's the moral law giver" path and we would have heard the loud crack of a logic implosion. We could be cruel and inspect her life and assess her moral score card because if she's the moral law giver, she must be morally correct in every way or she has a dilemma. I didn't, I gently pressed on "Sentience".
I said what if the animal was somehow, with science that maybe doesn't currently exist kept in stasis from conception, some sort of suspended animation, so it grows without sentience, emotion, awareness, emotions...would that be preferable? I could see the shock in her face rising but I went on to say that in such a fanciful example, the creature might therefore go from conception to birth to plate with no awareness whatsoever, no feelings, no emotions, would that be ok?
Well lets just say she rejected the notion & emotionally replied for quite a few minutes and it was hard for her not to pop a blood vessel at a guess. She was not happy at that futuristic suggestion at all. Yes she used words like disgusting, abhorrent and immoral.
When she concluded & calmed somewhat I calmly asked, "Can I ask you one more question please?" She said yes. I asked "It seems unrelated but when you look at the underlying morality you apply to animal rights owed due to sentience do you support or oppose abortion & is your chosen position free of species-ism"
She had quite the stunned look on her face, I guess she smelt a trap and so she should. In the brief moments she was collecting herself I added "I understand the desire for a woman to have full rights over her body and I'm fine with that but do her rights over ride those of the already begun life that's effectively in stasis developing, without sentience? I say this because many people are now agreeing life begins at conception, not birth"
She was flat out processing this and it caused some dilemma. I wasn't suggesting an unborn child without sentience should therefore be ok as food along with a tomato, rice or pasta. Nor was I thinking anyone in a coma is ok for a BBQ either just because they have no awareness, emotion or feeling. I was using her notion of sentience to show her notion of Species-ism was false, wrong and misleading.
If she was pro abortion then it was ok to end a life of a human if the older human's decides for whatever reason but morally wrong to eat a beef sausage or pork ribs. A little odd & strangely "Species-ist" if the moral rules apply to a sheep, cow or pig but not to a (unborn but very alive) human even if the human is currently un-sentient.
If she was anti abortion then she has the dilemma of why oppose abortion if sentience is not present yet wouldn't support the futuristic idea of a fully non sentient cow, sheep or pig?
Somehow, which ever way she goes she's got a sizable dilemma, a confronting truth she cannot dismiss once she sees it.
She originally says meat eaters are immoral Species-ist because we apply rules to protect humans from murder but not animals. Yet she too is "Species-ist" by applying different rules solely on the basis of Species. Seems if were all honest, we're all Species-ist & if I were to favour any species, why would I not favour my own. Not 100% sure how the sentient being known as an antelope feels about the moral laws not applying to the lion behind them tripping them up. Someone needs to speak up for the voiceless antelope being murder by the lion, whilst Fervent Animal Rights Activists are being very species-ist stacking pressure on meat eating humans only and not other natural predators.
For the record she was not humiliated in front of her friends or anyone else for that matter. I calmly said, "When you're playing with what you think are ethics or morals you have to realise that with humans there will always be uncomfortable loose ends. You better challenge your thinking long, long before you confront others with a principle you wish to enforce or you can find things like truth very confronting".
For the record, abortions happen for a wide range of reasons. Some of them are to save the mother's life from certain death, some its to save her socially and a myriad of other reasons, some valid some not.
My aim was not to have a Pro-Life/Pro-Choice debate, but to challenge the fact that sentience seems to only favour the animal and not equally favour the human. That as a result of that fact her premise was actually flawed and she was actually a species-ist. Once she saw, rather reluctantly she was Species-ist & sentience isn't solid grounds either we could probably move onto the "inferred rights", who invented them, when were they devised, who handed them down to capital "V" vegans. I think she saw the contradiction and dilemma of her argument. It was double crossing her the more she spoke. I think she soon worked out it was more than just flawed, it was totally wrong. Having another conversation is something I'd very much like but looks like that's never going to happen. Having shown "Species-ism" for what it is I wonder should I have just gone after the dilemma and contradiction of "sentience" instead. I think no second chances of another conversation were ever going to be likely.
I think as a result of the discussion, whenever terms like sentience, sentient beings, specie-ist or species-ism come up she'll probably go on a vow of silence herself. Sadly morning TV magazine shows are never going to put grist through the mill properly. It would be nice though for some media group to show James Aspey some interest and ask him the harder questions...even if he goes silent for another year, but we know he's never gone a whole year in the first place...EVER.
