This is neither the time nor the place to argue all the pros and cons of vegetarianism. My own view, as usual, tends to annoy both sides, since I have an aversion to any tribal allegiance at the expense of a shared humanity.
Yet what Mr. Jones managed to do was to make me think with him, and it is rare for a musician, or any public figure, to manage that. When someone talks down to us, it can only breed fear and resentment.
As much as I can enjoy a good steak, the rarer the better, I do know that simply reducing any value to my immediate pleasure is hardly a moral stand.
Now I might further insist that my body needs the meat, and offer all sorts of evidence from biology or history, and yet I see, time and time again, those around me who live in health and vitality on a diet that excludes meat completely.
Yes, it does seem rather odd that we write cutesy children's stories about the very animals we put on our dinner plates. Douglas Adams understood this with one of his best bits in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the "Dish of the Day".
Isn't is perfectly natural for creatures to die and to be consumed by other creatures? Certainly. But that does not mean Nature intends for us to be cruel, and I can use no other word to describe the way most of the food industry treats its livestock. Thought the animal may not understand it, we should know better.
You tell me you didn't personally slaughter the beast? Perhaps that is something you could take upon yourself, and see how you would manage it. In any event, a participation, however seemingly remote, does not remove our accountability. In paying money for it, we play our own parts.
I once saw the inside of a corporate slaughterhouse, and only my weekly visits to a state prison were more disturbing to me. I don't have to call it murder to find it abhorrent. I contrast it with the way my uncle snared a rabbit, then quickly and quietly dispatched it before I even noticed what he had done.
Enough of that. It's a great song, in a style that only the early 80's could produce, and it manages to inspire meaningful thought at the same time. That piano riff has been dancing around in my head now for over twenty years!
—5/2007
A few words of commentary from Howard Jones:
And the song itself:
Howard Jones, "Assault and Battery" from Dream into Action (1985)
The lives were taken
For feasts at the table A life of misery
Ending with a shock
Brutal murder (brutal murder)
All hands to the slaughter
Mass torture
All hands to the knife
And I can hear the screams
With the knife, the jolt, the wring
They must follow in our dreams
Carrying a twisted sting
Children's stories with their farmyard favourites
At the table in a different disguise
Don't talk to me of health
Or something someone else will do
We're talking about the act
Of taking life for me and you
And I hear their screams . . .
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