Boiling Lobsters

BRITISH RESEARCHERS at the London School of Economics decided to test whether lobsters feel pain while being boiled to death. Among touchy feely connoseurs of seafood, is is almost universally asserted that boiling a lobster to death is the most humane way of preparing the animal for consumption, that they do not feel pain. The variety of reasons given for this are numerous and become rather tedious in their improbability and obvious self serving rationalizing. The fact is that lobsters have central nervous systems, like nearly all animals, and cannot possibly fail to feel being boiled to death. The researchers suggested more humane means of preparing to eat lobster by putting it to death might involve a sharp knife, and a swift stroke. I was reminded of when I was a small child, maybe about ten yers old, and visiting a zoo with my father. I asked him whether the animals were happier and better off living in the zoo, or living in the wild, their natural habitat. Dad assured me that they were far happier and better off living in captivity, where their every need was provided for, and they were guaranteed plenty of food and shelter, and safe from enemies and disease. I believed him. I'm not quite sure when I first relized that his answer was intended only to give me comfort, to allay any tendency by me to become angry and depressed concerning the living conditions of animals in a zoo. It might have been fairly soon after he sold me the bill of goods, but it was not immediate. I was for the time beng content to harbor the allusion that he was telling the truth. Goethe said: "We resist the truth only becasue we fear that we will perish if we accept it." Now my opinion is that animals confined to zoos are happier there only if they were born there, and have no basis of comparison to any other life. To capture an animal in the wild and to force it to suddenly and forever spend its life in a zoo now stikes me as terribly cruel. This business about lobsters feeling no pain I have never endorsed, but of course I only heard it in adulthood, and was never presented this nonsense while a child. The advantage of adulthood is that one has had an opportunity to develop one's critical thinking skills, and therefore an opportunity to discern truth from nonsense. That ability can also be considered a disadvantage of adulthood. When Einstein was asked to write a message for inclusionin a time capsule, he wrote soething like: "If you have not become kinder and more humane than we were, may the devil take you". The time capsule has been opened. By most measures, we have failed to meet Einstein's requirements.