Posted on 05/03/2008 4:50:51 AM PDT by rhema
You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the "dignity" of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called "plant rights" is being seriously debated.
A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants," is enough to short circuit the brain.
A "clear majority" of the panel adopted what it called a "biocentric" moral view, meaning that "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive." Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim "absolute ownership" over plants and, moreover, that "individual plants have an inherent worth." This means that "we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily."
The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer's herd--the report doesn't say). But then, while walking home, he casually "decapitates" some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel decries this act as immoral, though its members can't agree why. The report states, opaquely:
At this point it remains unclear whether this action is condemned because it expresses a particular moral stance of the farmer toward other organisms or because something bad is being done to the flowers themselves.
What is clear, however, is that Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.
Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.
The intellectual elites were the first to accept the notion of "species-ism," which condemns as invidious discrimination treating people differently from animals simply because they are human beings. Then ethical criteria were needed for assigning moral worth to individuals, be they human, animal, or now vegetable.
Rising to the task, leading bioethicists argue that for a human, value comes from possessing sufficient cognitive abilities to be deemed a "person." This excludes the unborn, the newborn, and those with significant cognitive impairments, who, personhood theorists believe, do not possess the right to life or bodily integrity. This thinking has led to the advocacy in prestigious medical and bioethical journals of using profoundly brain impaired patients in medical experimentation or as sources of organs.
The animal rights movement grew out of the same poisonous soil. Animal rights ideology holds that moral worth comes with sentience or the ability to suffer. Thus, since both animals and humans feel pain, animal rights advocates believe that what is done to an animal should be judged morally as if it were done to a human being. Some ideologues even compare the Nazi death camps to normal practices of animal husbandry. For example, Charles Patterson wrote in Eternal Treblinka--a book specifically endorsed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--that "the road to Auschwitz begins at the slaughterhouse."
Eschewing humans as the pinnacle of "creation" (to borrow the term used in the Swiss constitution) has caused environmentalism to mutate from conservationism--a concern to properly steward resources and protect pristine environs and endangered species--into a willingness to thwart human flourishing to "save the planet." Indeed, the most radical "deep ecologists" have grown so virulently misanthropic that Paul Watson, the head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, called humans "the AIDS of the earth," requiring "radical invasive therapy" in order to reduce the population of the earth to under a billion.
As for "plant rights," if the Swiss model spreads, it may hobble biotechnology and experimentation to improve crop yields. As an editorial in Nature News put it:
The [Swiss] committee has come up with few concrete examples of what type of experiment might be considered an unacceptable insult to plant dignity. The committee does not consider that genetic engineering of plants automatically falls into this category, but its majority view holds that it would if the genetic modification caused plants to "lose their independence"--for example by interfering with their capacity to reproduce.
One Swiss scientist quoted in the editorial worried that "plant dignity" provides "another tool for opponents to argue against any form of plant biotechnology" despite the hope it offers to improve crop yields and plant nutrition.
What folly. We live in a time of cornucopian abundance and plenty, yet countless human beings are malnourished, even starving. In the face of this cruel paradox, worry about the purported rights of plants is the true immorality.
With....an....old...rusty.....SPOON.
Grrrrrrrr!
[don’t EVEN ask what I do to helpless, innocent artichokes]
Sal “Brussel Sprout Brutality” Amander
;]
Ratatouille is mass murder!
“The Burning Time”?....:)
I love asparagus. Broccoli is tolerable with a good dip. I’m with you on cauliflower.
:’) The local chain had a 2 for $4 sale on Fresh Express Caesar Salad kits. I’m eating the second one right now. :’) Thanks Berosus.
That reminds me of an old girlfriend. Whoops, I’ll never get away with that one.
Euell Gibbons made a fortune stalking stalks of ass per rage us. ;’)
I pinged you all but forgot to ping you allWow, I guess you really *are* in need of a cuppa joe.
“I think those activists are planning a coop d’etat.”
RIMSHOT!
“The local chain had a 2 for $4 sale on Fresh Express Caesar Salad kits. I’m eating the second one right now”
I enjoy your humor but listen, Fungi, I hope you’ve got plenty of chlorophyll credits, or I will sic the Keystone Kop Plant Police on you.
I’ll be garden the house against ingress.
There’s a lady I know
If I didn’t know her
She’d be the lady I didn’t know.
And my lady, she went downtown
She bought some broccoli
She brought it home.
She’s chopping broccoli
Chopping broccoli
Chopping broccoli
Chopping broccoli
She’s chopping broccoli
She’s chopping broccoli
She’s chop.. ooh!
She’s chopping broccola-ah-ie!
Let your guard down and garlic your cargo of escargot.
Thank you for the ping.
There is no end to insanity.
Did I miss the garden thread this week?
the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong.
What are these lunatics going to eat tomorrow? Plankton?
Oh wait! That is what sea creatures eat.
These people have to got to be public school graduates!
In Heaven:
The cooks are French,
The policemen are English,
The mechanics are German,
The lovers are Italian,
The bankers are Swiss.
In Hell:
The cooks are English,
The policemen are German,
The mechanics are French,
The lovers are Swiss,
The bankers are Italian.
What a bunch of silly old fusspots these Swiss are.
Don’t you need NERVE ENDINGS to feel pain? I’d like to think that a human life is worth much more than a stalk of asparagus...but I guess “some vegetables are more equal than others.”
It’s coming. Everything Orwell predicted is coming true.
Why should the human population be reduced to "save the planet" if that planet is itself a meaningless ball of magma with absolutely no meaning whatsoever? Why should (as some have suggested) the human race voluntarily go extinct so "nature" can go on "experimenting with life" when nature and life are ultimately meaningless?
And why is it that people who believe in randomness and spontaneity as the cause of everything insist on centralized planning to solve all these "problems" they see everywhere? Maybe the same random, spontaneous processes that created the universe are quite competent to solve any "problems" that arise?
"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
If you want to get a progressive red-hot with rage, try to trace all his moral pronouncements back to first principles when conversing with him.
As he senses the increasing incoherence of his worldview he will either insult yours as much as he can - blasphemy, etc. - or he will angrily question your intellect/education.
The most amusing thing about the modern progressive is that his worldview is far more unexamined and more instinctual than that of the orthodox Christians he most despises: he has never really been challenged and thus he has never really inquired into his faith - all the more so because he does not even realize that his faith is a faith, a philosophical disadvantage that few Christians share.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.