The 5 min challenge that I would like everyone to take is to watch this video in its entirety and note your reactions. It’s only about 3.5 mins long so not a burden. But, do not switch tabs or open any windows, just give it your full attention:
YouTube link here. Related news story here.
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Padding to move the discussion below the fold so that none of it is seen before the video
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Now, years ago when I would see something like this, or any similar pictures or statistics or videos of farm animal abuse, I would catch myself having the following reactions. These originate deep within the gut and are very visceral:
- This is an isolated incident.
- How dare the person who filmed the video distibute such blatant propaganda!
- So?
- What are you trying to tell me, that by consuming beef/milk I’m supporting this? [This probably wasn't addressed to anyone, not even the person who made/filmed/wrote the offending content.]
- So what, you’re saying I’m bad, that I’m evil? [Again this would be me answering a generic Everyman]
- This is disgusting, blatant propaganda. Godwin’s Law! Godwin’s Law!
- Is this supposed to get me to change my behaviour?
- If anything, I’m going to eat more beef and drink more milk to spite the [supposed] message of the video.
- [ADDED from discussion in comments] These people are sociopaths.
- [ADDED from discussion in comments] They are nothing like me.
- [ADDED from discussion in comments] I could never do anything like this.
Of course I exaggerated all of these. But they were a large part of my reaction. The footage/image/statistic iself would always be purely factual. However I would react vehemently against the supposedly implied message of the text.
I wonder if you can identify as having had at least some of those reactions. You don’t need to be a meat-eater to have them, I’m not. And here’s the interesting thing: if you think I placed this video there in specific support of animal rights organisations, that I had some deeper point then that in itself is similar to the reactions I listed.
A picture is not an argument, neither is a video. There are legitimate issues to be discussed here about ethics, agriculture, economics, evolution, animal behaviour, qualia and consciousness etc etc. But I want to sidestep all of those.
The main point of the video is that it’s very rare to feel a cognitive bias very blatantly, to the point where you know you’re undergoing it. Videos like this are what triggered it in me and are a baseline I can use to measure when I’m undergoing this bias. I was hoping to share some of the same realisation (at least with those who shared some of my reactions, which I think will be a lot): this is what cognitive dissonance, in its most obvious form, feels like from the inside.
16 comments ↓
Sorry, I could not watch for 5 minutes, and I come from a farming background.
Treating stock like this will get you fired where I work. And jailed for cruelty.
Though I had not seen that particular video before, its title (Ohio Dairy Farm Brutality) did prime my response. I had heard about the video, and the owner of the farm’s response denying the brutality, this being a recent news story. So, knowing the story but not having seen the video I was curious to actually see what the video showed. I knew it would be brutal from the descriptions I had read, but seeing it was quite shocking.
Watching it, my responses were:
shock;
horror;
incredulity that not only could someone could be that brutal, but be so brutal with such casualness, and with such boastfulness;
concern, not only for the animals but also for the (presumed) spouses of the men;
anger;
hatred;
a visceral desire for vengeance, to inflict the very same torture upon these men;
a realisation that enacting such vengeance makes me no better than them.
I had none of the reactions you list on watching this video. Well, perhaps an inkling of the propaganda thought at the end of the video when the advocacy part was shown. But I do admit to having many of those same thoughts upon watching similar videos in the past. Your concluding paragraph is very interesting, and illuminating.
And haunting.
Of course I had all the reactions you listed too. But I thought those were too obvious to mention as most people would have them unless they’re sociopaths.
Also the video was actually very well cut to give the message — the first 16 seconds are actually as strong as the rest of the video.
When watching I hadn’t thought of the spouses and families of the men, good point. I guess in this context it’s easy to forget that they’re people with regular lives as well…
Video triggered a memory or something I heard once: “It was so disturbing it put me off mean for almost three minutes.”
I’m already a lifetime vegitarian, so I’m afraid no cognitive dissonance for me. I was also unwilling to watch the full video. I’ve seen enough like it and really don’t need more nightmarish imagery knocking around my head.
If you want to eat meat, and think it’s okay that everyone else does it that wants to, then you are endorsing an industry that kills billions of animals each year. In an industry of that size, things like this are statistically absolutely inevitable, and by endorsing it, you are also condoning it by refusing to do the one thing that could end this: changing your diet.
And now to end with another quote. This time Gollom from Lord of the Rings, “You’re all bastards! Thank you. Good night.”
I’m not sure how being a vegetarian automatically prevents the cognitive dissonance here? These reactions aren’t precluded for vegetarians.
As for supporting the industry this was my first thought too but then the way you spelled it out shows the problem: “In an industry of that size, things like this are statistically absolutely inevitable, and by endorsing it, you are also condoning it by refusing to do the one thing that could end this” — but this applies to any industry, there’s nothing that ties it to animal farming.
You might argue that the fact that all the animals are being killed makes this more likely than say abusing human farm workers or workers in any other industry in this fashion. But that’s a separate point entirely.
ANTI, allow me to alter your statement a little:
If you want to eat vegetables, and think it’s okay that everyone else does it that wants to, then you are endorsing an industry that uses billions of tonnes of fertiliser and pesticides each year. In an industry of that size, adverse environmental effects are statistically absolutely inevitable, and by endorsing it, you are also condoning it by refusing to do the one thing that could end this: changing your diet.
Michael:
>I’m not sure how being a vegetarian automatically
>prevents the cognitive dissonance here?”
Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by two contradictory ideas. Both ideas can’t be right, and if one if wrong the consiquence is that you’ve been a bad person. (If that wasn’t the case, you’d merely feel confused, not uncomfortable.) In my case I share your anger with the way the slaughter industry treats animals – but I feel no desire for the products of that industry. I have no contradictory idea in my head, and thus no cognitive dissonance.
> but this applies to any industry, there’s nothing
> that ties it to animal farming.
The incidents apply to any industry. Quite correct. But the consiquences do not. I can imagine a Ford worker losing his temper and severely beating a half finished car. I can’t imagine the car suffering as a result.
My intention though was that ‘death is not a pleasent process, and if you kill billions you get a failure rate’. KFC is quite happy with a rate of 99% painless death. Which translates to about 100,000 painful deaths each year, per factory. Mechanically, large scale animal suffering is unavoidable in a slaughter industry of any size
I would contrast this situation with car use. Ignoring the enviromental impact (if you own a SUV, then that big oil spill right now is partly your fault!) it is a statistical fact that Cars Kill Babies! More commonly they kill children and adults. I accept this willingly, if not happily, because road transport in general almost certainly saves more lives than it kills. There is also a large oversight agency (the police) which punishes people who break the rules. Finally people are constantly working to improve car safety for occupents and pedestrians alike. None of this rings true for the slaughter industry.
Stephen Moore…
You appear to be suffering from a rather extreme case of cognative dissonence. In fact it seemsto have affected you so much that it dropped your IQ into ‘did not pay attention in highschool’ and ‘you fail biology forever’ levels.
Mass production of fruit, vegitable, and grasses (like grain) does indeed do a lot of enviromental damage. However the animals you eat for food in turn eat the same grains that are otherwise quite palitable for humans. Unfortunately it takes some 7 tons of grain to produce 1 ton of meat. Meat production is thus EXTREMELY energy intensive. (And before you raise the point, no, meat is not 7 times more nutritious by weight. ) Beyond that meat is also VASTLY energy intensive when it comes to storage. In good conditions grain can keep for months without refrigeration. Meat cannot.
Given your blog I assume that forgetting basic highschool science is not typical behaviour for you. Never the less, I would strongly suggest you do not try to play the enviroment card when the alternative ‘meat’ diet does significantly more harm than the vegan or vegitarian one does.
ANTI, my comment was not a defence of the meat industry, but a critique of your logic. Sadly, you compound your use of an earlier logical fallacy by committing more in your response to my comment.
If the logic you employed is valid in your “statistically inevitable” comment, then so to is mine. And for the exact same reason. If the logic employed in my alteration is faulty, the logic in your original comment is faulty. And again, for the exact same reason.
I also don’t mind a little sarcasm in replies; it can enliven a conversation. But sarcasm is only effective by warrant of the wit employed. Sadly, you have also failed in this regard.
Stephen’s comment was exactly the same as mine (I think his might have been in moderation as I wrote mine so we didn’t see each other’s). Only difference is he used a specific example.
Stephen, this is why in such cases I avoid filling in the blank directly as the discussion almost always goes to “how can you compare X to Y?”
ANTI, the consequences can also apply to any industry — I was referring to people abusing co-workers, employees and any other beings over which they have some power (which happens in virtually any industry).
This may say more about my preconceptions about Ohio than I wish to make public, but I kept thinking if it wasn’t cows it’d be blacks, or catholics or jews or some other outgroup that these people had no empathy for.
I watched the film. Then I read the comments and shied away from posting a response for fear that it would not be sophisticated: I have no clue (or, let’s say, had–because I looked it up) what cognitive dissonance is, neither did I want to analyse my response in depth.
Well, I will just post my reaction, in raw form, in very pedestrian terms:
Disgusting. I hate these people. My first reaction was that these very same people are probably capable of inflicting the same pain, be it physical, emotional or verbal, to other humans (and non-humans). I immediately thought: fascistoids. Or: a way to train soldiers to become inhuman and therefore be ready to kill. No, I didn’t think about propaganda, the concept of vegetarianism did not occur to me while watching the video either. I did not feel like hitting these people back (I am unable to do so), but I did wander–in retrospect–what ways do we have to reform these idiots.
Incidentally, I have met christians who think that humans have absolutely nothing to do with animals. (In fact, some of them believe, literally, in Noah’s arc [morons exist].) I tend to think that the more different we think we are, the more we can abuse other species. These people seem to think they occupy a special place in nature and society that gives them the right to destroy whatever is different from them.
Be it as it may, one thing seems to be clear: they are halfwits and that’s that.
Keddaw — if you think there’s something special about Ohio then you might be falling under the spell of the “this is an isolated incident” bit — surely you’d agree that this is likely to happen at a certain rate in farms of all states and countries?
Takis — interesting that you didn’t think of vegetarianism or propaganda at all. But you’ve made me think of some other points that I’ll add to the post. For instance most of us would also have had the idea that say “these people are sociopaths, they are not like me (us) at all, I could never do something like that”. But this might also be another defence mechanism in us as the viewer, one that distances us from these actions. Unfortunately as I’ve written about in several posts over the last few months, we are all probably much closer to being able to do something like this than we like to think.
As much as one may be loathe to admit, such behaviour as exhibited by the men in the video is possible for each of us. The “I’m not like that” response is indeed a defence mechanism. Ordinary every day people can, under certain circumstances, can commit quite atrocious acts.
Milgram is the classic example, though that was different: acting under (perceived) authority and often against one’s better judgement. The difference in the example provided in the video seems more like peer acceptance of behaviour with the consequent of reinforcement and normalisation. That’s a very powerful influence on behaviour, and one that we’re very rarely, if ever, aware is occurring.
Even though such behaviours are possible, I daresay I can exercise self-control and avoid behaving in this way. It would take some very special circumstances for an ordinary person (like me, I’d like to think) to inflict such pain to other animals or humans. In fact, I’m lucky I’ve never been in such a position.
My opinion, however, is that there are people (perhaps like the one in the video) who do enjoy, regularly, acting in this way.
So. whereas we are all capable of such things, most of us would not do it. (A trained soldier would, of course, because, by definition, he or she is trained to kill; a religious fundamentalist would do it, because he or she believes it’s god who tells him so; a psychopath would do it; etc.)
I guess this example is a bit different to the Milgram experiment in that these people were abusing the calves for the sheer enjoyment of it, there didn’t seem to be any external factor. So Takis I agree that most people in our society would probably find it hard to bridge that chasm. But again it all depends on what the social norms are.
But I’m not sure what you meant by a trained soldier — I don’t see the connection to abusing cows. If you meant killing in generally then yes, but I think the general idea of killing is the one that’s much easier to cross for us all.
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