OK Lobster by Radiohead

Maybe the weather, maybe whatever.

Recently, I read an article entitled, "Blow for fans of boiled lobster: crustaceans feel pain, study says."

The article summarizes an experiment conducted by Robert Elwood, an expert in animal bahavior in Belfast, Ireland. He would daub acetic acid on the antenna of 144 prawns. And immediately, the prawns would begin grooming and rubbing the affected antenna, while leaving the untouched ones alone. This response, according to Elwood, is "consistent with an interpretation of pain experience." He argues that the same pain sensitivity is likely to be shared by lobsters, crabs and other crustaceans.

However, the debate continues over whether lobster feels pain. Other scientists offer differing explanations for the prawns response. Many scientist think only vertebrates have advanced enough nervous systems to feel pain, and suspect that the prawns' reaction to having acid daubed on their antennae was an attempt to clean them. They argue that most animals possess receptors which respond to irritants. "Even a single-cell organism can detect a threatening chemical gradient and retreat from it," says one opposing scientist. "But this is not sensing pain."

Naturally, I thought of David Foster Wallace's essay "Consider the Lobster" that he wrote for gourmet magazine. In it, he describes the ethics of ethics of boiling a creature alive in order to enhance the pleasure for the consumer.

Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way as we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme -- and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.

So here's my aggravation.

I read an article about lobsters.

Notice that the scientists basically have two completely opposing viewpoints on the same data/observation. Short of communicating with the prawn and asking if it can feel the acid burn or whether they are the cleaning motion is a knee-jerk reaction to the acid (which, in itself, would answer the question of whether they feel pain because communication on that level requires high-level cognitive abilities), there never will be a definitive answer.

I read this and feel that the debate over lobsters is a microcosm of modern-day u.s. politics. And I start feeling like a fly caught between a clear window and mini-blinds. The scientists arguing for pain sensation are left-leaning and compassionate. The reaction scientists are people on the right - formulaic problem solvers. And from my point of view, they make decisions from a place of moral superiority. I wish there was less of that in everything from US foreign policy to the angry self-righteous driver on the road.

I'm left leaning and I feel that Bush was able to mask his extremism and dip into the moderate well in the last two elections with semantics - compassionate conservatism was a big one.

I lean toward the left. But I wish both sides had more self-awareness, the ability to see how one's upbringing or circumstances might have adopted the views that one adopts. Wallace hits it in his article when he says that on some level he feels that he's morally superior to a lobster while he acknowledges his self-interest in holding such a belief. He exhibits a degree of self-awareness that I think is missing from the far extremes of the right and left political spectrum.