Future-Present
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

By James McWilliams
October 2013

Supporters of the “death is just one day” or “everything dies” approach to rationalizing the “humane slaughter” of animals fail to consider the point that life is a phenomenon that’s given meaning not in the moment alone but by what has yet to happen as well.

For all the discussion that goes on about the comparative ethical implications of raising animals in industrial and non-industrialized settings, the easily overlooked point is that both systems, and for that matter any system that raises animals to kill them, engages in the troublesome behavior of ending an animal’s life unnecessarily and, in so doing, denying that animal a future of potential pleasure. Supporters of the “death is just one day” or “everything dies” approach to rationalizing the “humane slaughter” of animals fail to consider the point that life is a phenomenon that’s given meaning not in the moment alone but by what has yet to happen as well.

In many ways our essential quality of life is contingent on the expectation of future happiness. The nit and grit of every moment—the here and now—is linked to the future in ways we rarely appreciate. About ten minutes ago my dogs misinterpreted my movements to think we were heading out for a walk. They began to huff with excitement and run back in forth in anticipation. They were thinking of the future and the happiness they would experience later. Every act, in this sense, depends on having access to the future. Awareness of that access strikes me as critical to evaluating the argument that “death is just one day.”

We plan. And so much of what we do in the moment is intended to lay a foundation for future behavior. This is likely as true for sentient animals as it is for humans. It’s also an idea that might help us draw some distinctions between between animals that deserve equal moral consideration and those who do not. It seems unlikely that insects, to cite a controversial example, have conscious awareness of the future in the same way that farm animals do. Perhaps this could be one reason we might deny insects the same level of moral standing we grant to pigs, cows, and chickens.

Do note: behaving in a way that’s relevant for future activity and behaving in a way that self-consciously anticipates the future are not the same thing. Bees and ants and probably every insect acts in a way that’s relevant for the future, but they are not self-sconsciosly aware of it. Heading to the other margin, even mentally incapacitated humans are aware of a future, one that might very well bring a modicum of pleasure.

This idea of the future being embedded in the present, as well as the implications it has for our assessments of moral consideration, has been percolating with me for a few years. I’d like to pursue it more systematically, so I look forward to all thoughts and references you might have.

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