Cognitive dissonance is the premise that we can hold incompatible ideas as relate to behaviors, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, or any other kind of knowledge.  Essentially, it states that we can hold two mutually exclusive ideas without our brains exploding.  To better explain, here are some personal examples:

– I believe in the rule of law; I have been known to speed when driving, an obviously illegal act.

– I know it is imperative for us to protect the environment and do all we can to reduce the damage we inflict on our planet; I love my car and have no intention of giving up driving.

– Drug use by the inept, ignorant, insubstantial, ineffectual, and/or incapable too often leads to ruined lives, crime, health problems, and death — just like alcohol; I feel drugs should at minimum be decriminalized, but more importantly they should be legalized.

– Animals deserve respect and protection; I eat meat.

It is that last example to which I am responding.

With relative ease I admit self-contradiction in this regard: my adamant conviction that animals deserve respect and to be treated with compassion coupled with my unrelenting carnivorous tendencies.  I know beyond any doubt that the way in which most animals are harvested as food sources is disgusting and unethical.  All one needs do is consider the video available showing the facilities responsible for beef, chicken, pork, and veal, to name a few.  And what of the precarious balance of the food chain which we are tilting in our own favor without regard for what dangers might be caused by our mass captures of crab, lobster, salmon, tuna, crawfish, and other meat sources from the wild.  The morally delinquent carnivore within me is constantly at odds with my upstanding and humane conscience that knows such activities are wrong.

To our credit, “[t]he theory of cognitive dissonance holds that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions.”  When it comes to meat and how we farm it for human consumption, it would appear we have indeed been compelled to think of a better way: growing meat instead of butchering it.

You munch a strip of bacon then pet your dog. You wince at the sight of a crippled horse but continue chewing your burger. Three weeks ago, I took my kids to a sheep and wool festival. They petted lambs; I nibbled a lamb sausage. That’s the thing about humans: We’re half-evolved beasts. We love animals, but we love meat, too. We don’t want to have to choose.

[…]

The case for eating meat is like the case for other traditions: It’s natural, it’s necessary, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But sometimes, we’re mistaken. We used to think we were the only creatures that could manipulate grammar, make sophisticated plans, or recognize names out of context. In the past month, we’ve discovered the same skills in birds and dolphins. In recent years, we’ve learned that crows fashion leaves and metal into tools. Pigeons deceive each other. Rats run mazes in their dreams. Dolphins teach their young to use sponges as protection. Chimps can pick locks. Parrots can work with numbers. Dogs can learn words from context. We thought animals weren’t smart enough to deserve protection. It turns out we weren’t smart enough to realize they do.

Is meat-eating necessary? It was, back when our ancestors had no idea where their next meal might come from. Meat kept us alive and made us stronger. Many scientists think it played a crucial role in the development of the human brain. Now it’s time to return the favor. Thousands of years ago, the human brain invented agriculture, and hunting lost its urgency. In the past two centuries, we’ve identified the nutrients in various kinds of meat, and we’ve learned how to get them instead from soy, nuts, and other vegetable sources. Meat has made us smart enough to figure out how we can live without it.

[…]

[W]e can’t change our craving for meat, but we can change the way we satisfy it.

How? By growing meat in labs, the way we grow tissue from stem cells. That’s the great thing about cells: They’re programmed to multiply. You just have to figure out what chemical and structural environment they need to do their thing. Researchers in Holland and the United States are working on the problem. They’ve grown and sautéed fish that smelled like dinner, though FDA rules didn’t allow them to taste it. Now they’re working on pork. The short-term goal is sausage, ground beef, and chicken nuggets. Steaks will be more difficult. Three Dutch universities and a nonprofit consortium called New Harvest are involved. They need money. A fraction of what we spend on cattle subsidies would help.

Growing meat like this will be good for us in lots of ways. We’ll be able to make beef with no fat, or with good fat transplanted from fish. We’ll avoid bird flu, mad-cow disease, and salmonella. We’ll scale back the land consumption and pollution involved in cattle farming. But 300 years from now, when our descendants look back at slaughterhouses the way we look back at slavery, they won’t remember the benefits to us, any more than they’ll remember our dried-up tears for a horse. They’ll want to know whether we saw the moral calling of our age. If we do, it’s time to pony up.

Mohandas Gandhi once said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”  I could not agree more.  I sincerely feel this very topic is one of the moral enormities of our time.  If we can find ways to replicate meat through biotechnology, consider the benefits in addition to what is outlined in the article: we stop mass culling of animals from the wild, we restore at least some order to the planet’s food chain, we return tremendous amounts of land back to nature that currently are used for the production of butcher material, and we halt the inhumane slaughter of so many animals who are forced to live their lives in horrendous conditions just so they can end up on the dinner table.

I think there is undeniable promise in this idea.  It certainly would be something I would prefer over our current methods, and I think a great many people would agree.

Meanwhile, I think more and more about my own carnivorous tendencies.  And I think it might be time to give them up.

[via Andrew]