Mr. Balcombe is a vegan who, claiming ethical reasons - in particular, respect for other sentient beings - eats no animal products at all. He did admit, on the show, that he has no problem with pets (he described them as companion animals) and that he has two cats.
This generates today's head scratchers:
- Does Mr. Balcombe keep his cats as indoor captives or does he allow them outside to roam and to hunt birds and other small animals as is their nature.
- Cats have evolved in such a way that, to be healthy, they require a high protein, moderately high fat, and very low carbohydrate diet - i.e. meat and other animal products. So, does he feed them meat based cat food or does he deny their real health needs and feed them soy protein or other synthetic foods?
Head scratchers indeed!
Or perhaps the answer is just hypocrisy?
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4 comments:
I guess you didn't actually listen to very much of the show? Jonathan Balcombe addressed the issue of what he feeds his cats. He acknowledged the moral dilemma the situation engenders, but stated that he feeds his cats meat since they are obligate carnivores, unlike humans who have a choice.
This is my first visit to your blog. With all respect I must say that throwing out the cheap accusation of hypocrisy, especially when you have not listened to a person's complete argument, does not strike me as "reasoned discussion rather than shouting...."
A hypocrite is someone who deliberately pretends to be what he is not. Balcombe is not pretending. He is quite open about the unresolved conflicts in his ethics. I don't think the mere fact of not being perfectly consistent renders someone a hypocrite, otherwise we'd all be guilty.
What bothers me is those who present themselves as better than we lesser mortals. I try to do the right thing - at least most of the time - but fail more frequently than I would like. I would like to be thought a superior person but it just isn't going to happen - no matter how hard I try.
The strong impression that I took away from Mr. Balcombe's remarks was that he thinks himself better than me.
If Mr. Balcombe still has unresolved ethical conflicts, he needs to put them up front for all to see. After listening for a while, I decided that he was a puzzle - perhaps a hypocrite - but not worth wasting more time listening to.
To write about him, though, is quite important because there are many, many, people, from all ends of the political spectrum - and none, who think that they know better than everyone else. They should be challenged - for their attitudes as much as for their approach to life.
Perhaps my mistake was to pay any attention to him at all.
Thanks for your response. It seems we came away from the show with two very different impressions.
I did not get the sense that he was posing as a superior person. I found his attitude very unassuming and nonjudgmental. I also thought he was very up front about his imperfect solution to the dilemma of feeding cats.
We all tend to believe that our own opinions are right, and we present our own opinions with conviction. I think that's all he was doing. His opinion just happens be different from the generally accepted attitude towards animals.
Does Mr. Balcombe wear leather shoes? I once heard "Dr. Science" reply to a question that true vegans only wear shoes manufactured from the hides of animals that died of natural causes and that "Rebock" was actually a Swiss word that means "road kill.";-)
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