Self-Deception and Slaughter: The Psychological Salves Required to Kill

The following images of self-slaughterers (and, in one case, a witness of a slaughter) are accompanied by short commentaries on the justifications offered for undertaking the butchery, or the meaning of the act. The point here is as simple as it is disturbing: when humans choose to kill an animal they know doesn’t want to die they’re forced to weave a protective narrative that obscures the inherent and unnecessary aggression of thier action.

First comment on this person’s blog: “Good for you for taking back another piece of your food chain.”

A student participating in a chicken butchering workshop at Fairhaven College: “I realize now, more than ever, that the chicken on my dinner plate was a living creature and that it had to be sacrificed for my consumption.”  (I wonder if they offer Ethics 101 at Fairview?)

“Death is only one day . . .”

“I felt a whole lot of pride, and I felt like a real farmer . . .”

It strikes me as deeply troubling that we’re so indifferent to the emotional lives of animals that we can justify killing them on the basis of the following “arguments”: killing animals is a way to fight the power of corporate influence; killing animals has to be done as part of some skewed sense of the natural order; death is meaningless if life was lived well; and killing an animal instills pride in the agrarian life.

Just in case you’re not yet thoroughly depressed, I’ll end with this excerpt from a magazine I recently discovered called Backwoods Home Magazine:

“Fall is butchering time, a period of joy in the harvest of the year’s work and of sadness that the lives of your beautiful, healthy animals have come to an end. On this occasion the animals should be treated with the same kindness and respect with which they were treated during their lives. Good farmers raise their animals free from fear, anxiety and stress. The animals should meet their end as they lived, without the terror of the slaughterhouse.”

 

But the reality of the slaughter.