Life

Ever since I started working with animal models I've been asking myself the same question. What is life? I don't ask myself this question scientifically: I intuitively believe that life is a series of highly organised chemical reactions. I guess I ask the question somewhat ethically. What is life? Why is it wrong to end a life? Is the life of a human being worth more than that of a bacteria or a dog or a chicken?

Every week I incubate, culture and finally kill between 18 and 80 chicken eggs. I don't feel bad about this. Though this may have to do with me, maybe I'm particularly insensitive, but I suspect anyone who had to do what I do would end up caring as little as I do. This is the first step that leads to me asking myself the question.

The second step is my asking myself something similar to should I feel bad about killing these chicken embryos? And if I don't, should I feel bad about not feeling bad? This is a difficult question to answer, amongst other things because the default answer (culturally) is yes. Killing is bad. Killing animals is less bad, but it's still bad. However, when I think of things scientifically... If life is what I believe it is, a bunch of reactions, then asserting that killing is bad would mean that killing a human being and killing a bacterium are the same degree of bad. However, killing is quite simply interrupting a set of chemical reactions. I don't feel bad when I stop a chemical reaction (say, when I take a cake out of the oven), so why should I feel bad for stopping another set of chemical reactions?

This leads me to the uncomfortable conclusion that if I ever had to kill another human being I wouldn't feel too bad about it. I could rationalise it, and I probably wouldn't have nightmares about doing it. I wouldn't feel guilty.

However, I don't think it's right to kill people. Thinking about killing another person makes me feel not just uneasy, but positively bad. I don't want to ever be in the position where my killing someone could lead to saving a hundred people. I don't understand how someone can stop another person from being alive. It makes my head spin. It makes me feel sick. It makes me want to cry. Most of all, it makes me feel like these people who have ever killed someone (except perhaps in self defense) are aliens. I could not ever understand them. They are fundamentally different from me.

I can't argue for the respect of human life scientifically. I can't logically reason why the life of a human being should be worth more than that of a chicken. The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that my only argument against killing is an appeal to sameness and perspective. The reason I can't understand killing is because I like being alive. This sounds pretty obvious, but perhaps it isn't. I don't just like doing certain activities. I like the fact that I'm alive. I like that my heart beats and that I can run and that I can see. I like that thinks happen to me, I like growing I like being able to see the world to observe, to think, to talk to drink. I love it. It's worth every second. So my appeal is this: how can I deprive someone else from something that is so wonderful, that is such a gift? I could never do it. It's not that I think human life is special, it's just that any other human being probably sees life in a similar way to the way I see it. That is enough for me. Just for that they deserve to live. I don't know how a chicken sees the world. A chicken can't explain integration. A dog can't understand Shakespeare. Only another human being can listen to Bach and feel what I feel. And that's my argument against killing. Not because life is sacred, or because human life is special. Just because the life any other human being experiences is closer to mine than that of any member of any other species.