Greek poet, Aeschylus, wrote the tragedy Prometheus Bound to tell the moving story of Prometheus, and how he suffered for standing up against a mandate that he deemed to be ethically unfounded. In the play, Prometheus crosses Zeus by deliberately disobeying him, and giving fire to the humans and teaching them how to write, use tools, and a number of other useful things. By doing this, Prometheus obviously provoked Zeus' anger, and earned himself a terrible punishment: that he should be shackled to a boulder forever, and that each day a vulture would come and eat out his liver (which would grow anew every day). After reading his punishment for the first time, I found myself wondering about the reasons why Prometheus would ever have crossed Zeus in the first place. He didn't get anything out of it except maybe the satisfaction of frustrating Zeus, but I don't think that this was the reason for his action. Prometheus knowingly submitted himself to a terrible vengeance, meaning that he was either completely mad, or was operating under some different mode of reasoning.
In the play, there can be no doubt that Zeus is playing the role of an oppressive authoritative figure residing over humanity. It seems that his chief aim was to ensure that his creation exist solely to experience misery and hardship. He does not provide for them in any way other than to allow them to live. What makes Prometheus so special is that he is not only able to understand that there is evil being done, but also that he has the capacity to do something about it. He senses the injustice and then acts in spite of it. In titular and slightly masked terms, Prometheus is bound to a code of morals greater than the law. His actions are completely selfless.
Also in the play, we see a similar situation, handled in a completely different way. Hephaestus, smithy of the God's, has been charged by Zeus with the task of physically binding the guilty titan to the boulder. He is aware of Prometheus' plight, and is even sympathetic towards the titan. Hephaestus recognizes that Prometheus did the moral and correct thing, and believes the punishment to be unjust. In other words, he believes that Zeus' verdict was evil, and the punishment unfounded. However, Hephaestus chains him to the boulder anyways. He, like Prometheus, senses the injustice, but unlike Prometheus, he dismisses the recognition. Instead, he acts in a self-preserving manner.
If Hephaestus was put on trial for his actions, would he be found guilty of crimes against humanity? Are his actions tolerable? If there is any relative real-life situation to that of Hephaestus, it is undoubtedly the Nuremberg Trials. In the 1940's, Adolf Hitler led a massive horrifying campaign against Jews all across Europe. He stole them away from their homes, packed them into rail-cars, and shipped them off to concentration camps where they were starved, tortured, and killed. While Hitler was the one ultimately responsible for the Holocaust, he was not the only one at work. The Nazi party consisted of more than just Adolf Hitler: there was a whole host of people willing to do what Hitler told them to do. Armies, as well as most social organizations, work as a unit by means of hierarchy. After the Nazi's were defeated in 1945, after the murder of approximately 6 million European Jews, many of the Nazi leaders and ranking officers were put on trial for their war-time crimes. Many of them employed what came to be known as the Nuremberg Defense.
The Nuremberg Defense essentially argued that the accused party was simply following orders. For example, it is not an executioners job to pass judgment. Instead, it is his job to execute. In much the same way, Hephaestus, from Prometheus Bound, doesn't believe that it is his responsibility to contradict Zeus' orders. This would undoubtedly result in a punishment of his own. The same could be said for many of the Nazi's. To resist tyranny usually results in death. This Nuremberg Defense brings into the light a key ethical dilemma that we as humans deal with on an almost daily basis: Are we subject to national laws and mandates? Or are we, like Prometheus, bound to a higher ethical code? Is it even possible to enforce selflessness? These questions are all actually applicable in the way that we handle and deal with animals on a daily basis.
In 1958, The Humane Slaughter Act (HMSLA) passed as a federal law, requiring that animals should be stunned, or rendered unconscious before they are slaughtered in order to ensure as painless a death as possible for the animal. The U.S. has failed to effectively enforce this act, however, leaving many companies and slaughter houses unregulated, resulting in the continued inhumane slaughter and treatment of animals. While the HMSLA is a respectable first step towards ensuring at least a small degree of humanity in the slaughter process, it leaves too many issues unaccounted for, and many times forces the man actually doing the slaughtering to deal with the same ethical dilema that we see in the Nuremberg Defense. For example, similarly to the Nazi's system for persecuting Jews, the company executives themselves are responsible for determining how exactly the company itself is going to treat and slaughter its cattle. They then employ and expect workers to follow their business plan. Does this make the workers guilty of inhumane slaughter? Also, does it make consumers inhumane for buying meat from brands that don't guarantee humane treatment and slaughter of their product?
We cannot hold companies responsible for their treatment of animals if we eat their meats regularly. Instead, we are called stand up for what we believe, and to act in a selfless manner by not only condemning what many meat-manufacturing companies are doing as wrong, but also by taking action against these companies. Justice and humanity are more than just philosophical ideas that we talk about. They are concepts that require agents and action. In other words, they won't exist unless we do something about them.
The first step in creating a more humane way to raise and slaughter cattle is to make the legal changes necessary to force companies to stop taking the cheap way out. The HMSLA states that animals (not including chickens) must be "stunned" prior to slaughter. It fails to mention how they are to be treated before they are slaughtered, and also fails to regulate inhumane methods of slaughter. Before we can ensure slaughter is actually being done in a humane fashion, the HMSLA needs to be amended to include all of the factors mentioned above. It needs to specifically include all the animals involved in the food industry. In addition, the HMSLA must limit the methods of slaughter available to slaughterhouses. It is too tempting for executives looking to cut the cost of manufacturing to just choose the cheapest and, subsequently, most inhumane method of slaughter.
The second, and arguably most important, step towards a change, is for the Federal Government to actually enforce the act. Just like speed limits and littering laws, the HMSLA is completely useless if it cannot be enforced. This is going to require the Federal Government to spend money on employees to go to the slaughterhouses at regular intervals to check and make sure companies are taking the HMSLA to heart.
Both of these steps take place on a national level, meaning that they need to be recognized and national necessities. In order to effectively garner recognition as a serious ethical issue, it needs backing from devoted and articulate spokesmen. A movement is always a social phenomenon involving members of the social body. The best way for people to get on board with this movement would simply be to write a letter to your representative or senator informing him of your concern. Another way to express your concern is to consume only meats and products that you know to be humanely processed.
Like Prometheus, we all need to act according to a higher and more perfect ethical code than what is laid out by our Federal Government. It is important, however, to understand that we are not going to be tied to a rock for all eternity if we decide to regulate the meat that we eat. The worst that could happen is that you simply don't eat meat for a while.
Word Count (no quotes): 1548
Sources:
Image 1: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/RM/Prometheus3Griepenkerl.jpg
Image 2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Industrial-Chicken-Coop.JPG
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