Killing Jellyfish

Our current system of ethics is unsound. It is not utilitarian. It is not logical. In what ways are dogs more deserving of a good life than pigs? They are both four-legged mammals with high sociability and intelligence. They are both, to some degree, biologically similar to humans, pigs even more so than dogs. On what basis, then, is the later species deemed man’s best friend, and the former man’s best supply of meat? In a fair universe, the moral value of beings should be proportional to their level of cognition, not the irrational, wishy-washy feelings humans have for them because of their proximity to us. In other words, we should inflict less pain and suffering for beings that can feel more of that pain and suffering - this is the only logical system of delineation. According to this system, then, it is perfectly okay to eat vegetables. because they have no sentience, no consciousness of being “alive”—their lives do not matter. It is also okay to do away with humans in persistent vegetative states—in terms of cognition, they are basically vegetables. Similarly, when it comes to echinoderms and cnidarians such as corals and jellyfish, we can safely presume that their lives do not matter much, to them or to anyone else, for they have no brains, and consequently, no minds. But as soon as you enter the subphylum Vertebrata, though—as soon as you have the reptiles, the birds, the dogs, the pigs that clearly react to pain and bodily damage the same way as a functional human would—then life becomes absolutely precious. Terminating it prematurely is immoral. Terminating the life of a human is the most immoral act of all, again not because of some sacred quality intrinsic to our humanity, but because we possess the greatest ability to think, the most heightened sense of ego. This is excluding babies, of course, and the brain-damaged, whose inability to fully self-perceive renders them subhuman. Cogito ergo sum, as Descartes proclaimed. I think, therefore I am. Opponents of this moral system point, inevitably, to the food chain. If all sentient life is precious, then aren’t all carnivorous predators immoral all the time, by the simple act of propagating their own lives? But if wolves become vegetarian, they surely would die, thus also committing the sin of life-termination against their own selves. If a wolf’s interests collide with those of a deer—both beings of near-equal sentience—then whose sentience matters more? Whose pain and suffering matters less? Why must we assume more moral responsibility than wolves?By the same logic as cogito ergo sum—a higher plane of consciousness equals heightened moral value and moral responsibility. Thus, as the most intelligent species native to the Earth—the only claim we can make about ourselves that still remains relatively undisputed—we bear the burden of life conservation, with regards to species less sentient than we are. I think, therefore I am moral. Over a vegan lunch of hummus and avocado chocolate pudding, I questioned Peter Singer, celebrity ethicist, animal rights advocate, “the most dangerous man on earth,” about the wisdom of sentientism, the cognition-based hierarchy of moral value that he had vociferously extolled in his assembly speech. Despite the apparent rationality of nociceptors, neurons, signal transduction and prefrontal cortex, I am still not convinced that this is a sound practice, evaluating other forms of consciousness or its absence with our extremely limited own. Consciousness cannot be assessed presumptuously. After all, can we objectively say that because they do not possess a "brain" the way we recognize it, that certain beings are less sentient than others? Sentientism, in essence, seems like nothing but another form of (ableist) anthropocenic speciesism in disguise. Singer turned around, looked at me squarely in the eye.“What other way is there?” he asked.Maybe, indeed, there is no other way. Maybe, the quest to delineate different life forms’ moral value is, from the start, a futile one, and we can do no better than the Jain who refuses to purposelessly harm even a microorganism. But let’s eat only when we have to.