David Foster Wallace reads "Consider the Lobster" (on the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival)

Originally published in the August 2004 issue of Gourmet magazine, this review of the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival generated some controversy among the readers of the culinary magazine. The essay is concerned with the ethics of boiling a creature alive in order to enhance the consumer's pleasure, including a discussion of lobster sensory neurons.
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"Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" This was the question posed by the renowned late author David Foster Wallace in "Consider the Lobster." Wallace, who was hailed by critics as a literary genius, wrote this article "to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival." Gourmet editors may have gotten more than they bargained for, but Wallace's words echoed the concerns of thinking people everywhere.
For Wallace, the Maine Lobster Festival inspired an unflinching inquiry into the ethics of boiling an animal alive. His article highlighted two specific coping mechanisms that people adopt when confronted with the reality of animal suffering--avoidance and denial. Wallace admitted that his "own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing." However, upon arrival at the Maine Lobster Festival, he found that "there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions."
Wallace's article explored the excruciating pain that lobsters feel when they are boiled alive, taking both scientific evidence and his own observations into account. He expands his analysis to consider the question of eating meat in general, as well as the deeper question of how humans relate to other animals. Read the full article here.
This essay was republished in Wallace's eponymous collection of essays.
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[@ManufacturingIntellect]

Check out these David Foster Wallace books on Amazon! The Life of David Foster Wallace: geni.us/7xzix Conversations with David Foster Wallace: geni.us/HHYcGBe Infinite Jest: geni.us/RwhKG Join us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/ManufacturingIntellect Donate Crypto! commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/868d67d2-1628-44a8-b8dc-8f9616d62259 Share this video! Get Two Books FREE with a Free Audible Trial: amzn.to/313yfLe Checking out the affiliate links above helps me bring even more high quality videos to you by earning me a small commission on your purchase. If you have any suggestions for future content, make sure to subscribe on the Patreon page. Thank you for your support!

[@cat-breath9684]

"If you hate the whole idea...please know that it's not my fault."

[@cyberhawk80]

truth hurts.. but it is undeniable.

[@Xplorer228]

Meanwhile I'm thinking.. why doesn't he just say the word "footnote" before making one? lol

[@johne.nobody2946]

mossy1 I thought that too, as he does in many of his other recorded works. I’d imagine the whole “small” footnote sound thing was the publisher’s/studio’s idea. Hence his very self-aware statement, “it’s not my fault.” Could be wrong tho lol.

[@vansnbandsoyoinkshire3003]

thanks david wouldnt want to improperly place the blame on you

[@bobwah]

To me he is saying it isn't "his" fault if "you" hate anything. It is totally your own choice what you hate. And is it as important as the subject matter itself?

[@CanadianRevolution27]

'As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.' Never have my sentiments of being a tourist been expressed so vividly. Godspeed, DFW.

[@nlewis2386]

"as you can imagine, it's unimaginable". this is why I love dfw

[@Quebedify]

@@hamburgerdan101 i like him cuz hes secksy

[@trapezoidmon]

Me the alt centrist that’s such a strangely mean comment

[@julioferr]

Me the alt centrist r u okay man

[@freesolja1]

@@hamburgerdan101 it's a good line though

[@hamburgerdan101]

Emery Reese at this time in my life I was stuck on a boss in dark souls it no longer reflects how I actually feel

[@Chironex_Fleckeri]

I wish we could've heard the life reflections of a 75 year old DFW. I wonder if he would ever have found peace.

[@ToadalSimplicity]

I wonder about this too. It's a shame the world is missing such an insightful and provocative voice.

[@scotscub76]

I think perhaps if he hadn't withdrew from the Nardil he may have been a 75 year old one day. :O(

[@thebrook5857]

He went back to the place before his birth, I don’t think he could have survived the madness that we live in today

[@yep3489]

His lifelong battle with clinical depression sadly deprived us all of a 75 year old DFW and his unique voice.

[@Bjarku]

Woah woah woah...he would have been 75 by now? Are you kidding? You just made me feel incredibly old. Edit: he would have been 58. Phew but still. About the same age as my dad. I always just assumed we were of about the same generation.

[@Crazeyfor67]

To lose such a brilliant, considerate, quality human being to suicide due to mental depressive anguish is sad beyond words. R.I.P. DFW

[@lancelotdufrane]

Bliss. Thankful to have found this voice of reality. Truth is rarely spoken. DFW. God is enjoying your writing… Sir.

[@Buttsmoker]

Probably one of the greatest essayists to ever live. Just unbelievable on every level. Once you think he’s hammered his point home, it takes on yet another new light with each line. It’s a shame we lost him.

[@classicalmusicismagic]

We never lost him. He's with us always thru his works

[@Brandon-o3o9n]

Totally agree. I think Big Red Son is my personal favorite of his essays and possibly all his works. Criminally underrated piece.

[@thinktwice-me7ie]

I discovered him just now and I keep thinking what a shame he´s not around anymore

[@The_Pedal_Guy]

There's not a single thing that I have heard or read from this man that hasn't blown my mind.

[@mitchwebster5088]

The “This is Water” Kenyon 2005 commencement speech - blows my mind every time I listen to it

[@hongzhang7688]

As someone whose first language is not English, I am deeply touched by this article. It's important, as I don't generally understand everything written in English, but this one, is different, strangely reaching the soul of mine, whatever how little it's left.

[@nicolareddwoodd3687]

Alissa Wilkinson: "Wallace himself never succeeded in joining a church, though he was an intermittent regular attender; he tried to become Catholic twice, partly because he was in love for years with Mary Karr, but the priest finally told him to go away because he asked too many questions. And yet, you'd be hard pressed to find another mind so obsessed with and honest about everything religion asks us to wrestle to the ground all our lives, and the answers he found were often rooted in something like faith. Wallace could be funny and cool and a little bratty, but he was rarely ironic about the stuff that really mattered: what we think, how we treat one another, depression, desire, addiction, kindness, wonder."

[@nursemonika6852]

His problem was that he "went to a Catholic priest". He should have known that he could go straight to God. That's why Jesus died...so we could have a personal, intimate relationship with God...no in-betweens needed. So sad.

[@guruleinii]

Mary Karr...That relationship was probably his biggest mistake in life. She's a c....

[@hippocrates1297]

@@nursemonika6852 nice "no true christian" fallacy. Do you honestly think david foster wallace never tried to go directly to god?

[@nursemonika6852]

@@hippocrates1297 I don't understand your reference to "no true Christian". But, to answer your question, I sincerely believe that David did try going to God directly...many times.

[@hippocrates1297]

@@nursemonika6852 it's a refrence to the "no true scottsman" fallacy.

[@vegancodingnovice9468]

how does he read without moving?

[@owenwalker1774]

Best comment.

[@mesken96]

lol

[@MartianManhunter1987]

Unassailable talent which even his motor functions cannot help but be paralysed by lol.

[@anastasiabananastasia]

he’s is in the fifth dimension now

[@megazoned3973]

Ventriloquism

[@kevinshaughnessy5032]

His voice is so soothing.

[@deanstanley2125]

I used to work at a northeast lobster shack where the specialty was broiled lobster. One day I given the job of splitting the bugs while they were still alive and it seemed like after I did the first few the remainders seemed to understand what was going to happen to them and began to fight with me trying to escape their fates. Thankfully it was towards the end of summer and I had less than 2 weeks until the restaurant closed for the year. I didn't go back for another season and haven't eaten lobster since.

[@zacnewford]

Damn bro, you a murderer xD

[@sigh824]

That jarring feeling of coming back to the story after that long foot note. RIP DFW

[@robertlehnert4148]

i am the wife of saber bob : my name is RitaSue Almond-Lehnert My feelings are jarred, until DFW unscrews the lid off the top of my skull, and my feelings become like a skylight searching for Luftwaffe bombers, and then I fly up into the cockpit of a Spitfire and I fire my hot brass tiny bullets so fast into those dragons who eject their eggs of fiery, bone-cracking death that I chainsaw their wings off, then I sob and cry and dive almost into the sea and cold, shivering fog because the crews of those Luftwaffe horrors probably had some remnant innocence and I , the Spit driver , have slaughtered them. But then I imagine the children in London, and I had to choose their survival. If only the German crews had loved their children enough to stay home. If only the Russians loved their children enough to stay home in 2021. If only a Spitfire could get past the anti-aircraft guns of NATO and provide capital punishment for Vladimir Putin. We can take that risk. We have learned that our real stories began with our deaths, and that our physical lives, constrained by physics, was just a long foot note in our real stories. Sometimes violence is the mercy we have to show to those we defend, so long as our violence is aimed at the dragons from the abyss, and not the dragons who defend us.

[@eben7248]

"See, for example, the aforementioned Main Eating Tent, for which there is a constant Disneyland-grade queue, and which turns out to be a square quarter mile of awning-shaded cafeteria lines and rows of long institutional tables at which friend and stranger alike sit cheek by jowl, cracking and chewing and dribbling." What a sentence. This whole essay was beautifully upsetting and provocative, and deeply inspiring to me as an amateur writer. That David Foster Wallace deprived the world of his existence is more the loss and fault not of David Foster Wallace, but of the world. We failed him, and it cost us all.

[@PineappleQuesadillas]

Hey man I read your Patreon page and I didn't know you put so much work into uploading content. I don't have any money to donate but I really appreciate your efforts.

[@ManufacturingIntellect]

Thank you! Believe it or not, it's even more work than I could quickly explain. But appreciative comments like yours keep me inspired to keep uploading and finding new content. Thanks again!

[@guitargatekeeper]

@@ManufacturingIntellect bless your hard work my friend :)

[@to2burger]

Where do you find this treasure trove of David Foster Wallace audio?

[@jonoh4883]

I'm able to fully appreciate his work now, having discovered it in my mid-thirties. But I really needed it in highschool.

[@blondegirlsezthis8798]

What a brilliant, hilarious and tragically sensitive man. You are missed O Captain, My Captain

[@kate9341]

So true

[@GodsNode]

I've been a vegetarian for 12 years now and he articulates perfectly what pains me when pondering this subject.

[@fookingmrsschwein698]

Please consider going vegan :)

[@anonb4632]

@@fookingmrsschwein698 Join our cult...

[@Vingul]

@@fookingmrsschwein698 do consider eating meat :-)

[@alpharoo2581]

@@jimbobb3509 You getting all your vitamins champ?

[@EthanUslabar]

Love this piece. I often listen to this while cleaning. The descriptions of all the people eating in the tents and the lack of hand washing facilities hits different in 2020 tho 😅

[@722890]

dude really disliked his trip

[@silverxXxlining]

Rest in Peace DFW we miss you, we love you

[@gonstotwriter]

Today is 12 Sept. 2020, the 12th anniversary of his suicide. R.I.P., D.F.W.

[@rileydwyer6696]

one of the best pieces i ever read, amazing to hear it read in his voice. he can truly make anything interesting

[@spartan1010101]

As a biologist, chef, and environmentalist these are conflicts I think about all the time.

[@fookingmrsschwein698]

And yet you never come to a conclusion?

[@soulfuzz368]

fookingmrsschwein it isn’t that easy

[@oingoboingo1720]

What exactly is the issue?

[@Xplorer228]

So do you do anything about it? It seems to me that when faced by a moral decision where your action could potentially cause extreme suffering, especially when the amount of gain is miniscule in comparison to the suffering, that one should err on the side of caution, no? But fish and invertebrates are really the only things we are somewhat unsure about. Pigs outperform 3-year-old human children on cognition tests and are smarter than any domestic animal, and animal experts consider them more trainable than cats or dogs. But what matters isn't so much IQ as the fact we know animals like pigs, cows, chickens, etc are capable of a great amount of pain and suffering. Human beings will look back on this age as one equivalent to a holocaust, which may seem like hyperbole but when you consider that these animals are capable of extreme suffering and are literally tortured in so many ways with roughly 300 million of them killed every day for food its not. Even if you were being very stubborn and considered 50 pig lives to be the equivalent to only 1 human life.. well with 480 million pigs being killed every four years (the length of the holocaust) that would be worth 9.6 million people. And that's just pigs. And just four years worth. But every day there's 800,000 cows killed. 4 million pigs killed a day. 178 million chickens killed a day. And that's just the 3 main land animals which together is 182,800,000 sentient beings being killed every single day.. but before that they are pumped with steroids, forced insemination (a light rape), tight quarters in a cage, severed limbs/parts like castration and beaking, and other forms of torture all their lives until a knife is dragged across their throat or they are shot or literally sent to a gas chamber. All just to satisfy our taste buds. Mere entertainment. The time for change is now.

[@Vagabond.utopia]

@@Xplorer228 we ain’t reading that bro

[@Fonzleberry]

The unease which DFW talks about is a hangover from the Norman conquest of England. Good anglo saxon words were kept by the peasants on the farm, but the refined French words were reserved for what ended up on the lords table. Hence cow/beef (boef) pig/pork (pork), deer/venison (venison), sheep/mutton (mutton). Chicken, duck, fish etc were cheap and plentiful enough, that your average peasant could have enjoyed it the same as the lord (although with less regularity)

[@hippocrates1297]

Yes, I was very surprised by the fact that he didnt know the source of these terms or maybe just set aside that knowledge to communicate a feeling to the reader? Might be a but of a stretch for the second one.

[@fookingmrsschwein698]

Just because that's the (assumed) historical reason doesn't mean there can't be an ethical dimension to it. I'm an English major and have studied this, and there are always reasons for why certain words are adopted and kept while others aren't.

[@beckettmurtaugh3170]

His voice embodies the season of winter

[@Monsterassassin3]

I dont remember where I saw it, but someone teaching this essay quoted this comment in one of their powerpoint slides. I think it was a college lecture of some sort. Just thought you would find that cool.

[@jodygarrett2145]

I never gave this stuff any thought until I studied jurisprudence at law school. I wonder if one people will look back in future at our treatment of animals the same way we look back at the slave trade today.

[@lukurt5820]

"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. [...] the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" - An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. A new edition, corrected by the author. London 1828. Chapter 17: Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence. IV. Fußnote "Interest of the inferior animals improperly neglected in legislation". p. 235, 236

[@nat-moody]

@@alexandertheordinary3807 Predatory (carnivorous) animals do not inflict unnecessary pain on other animals for their gustatory pleasure. Humans are unique in this sense. Moreover, we have evolved both cognitively and technologically to such a point where eating animals is a choice - and not a necessity. Therefore, your (strawman) argument is rather misguided. (And, for context; I'm not a vegetarian. However, I do object to the sadistic practice of boiling lobsters alive).

[@mistahsusan2650]

mechanisation of labor (especially agricultural labor) was the driving force behind the emancipation of slaves, although it is still commonplace in many parts of the world where (classical) liberalism didn't take root; MoL is what also freed animals from being beasts of burden; that is what freed humans and animals from forced or gruelling work, what will save animals from becoming a product in and of themselves would be growing animal muscle in petrie dishes.

[@rusty_rockets]

Alexander the Ordinary what an incredibly idiotic and ignorant comment.

[@soulfuzz368]

Rusty Rockets if you really think about it, it’s an important question. That is, if the suffering of animals is important. Many animals play with their food before they eat it. Have you seen the video of the Lion slowly torturing the small cat? My dog would do this with mice all the time if I let him.

[@danielbailey6095]

There are limits to what even interested people can ask of each other.

[@tomitstube]

i have long since stopped eating lobster for this very reason, many years ago sitting in a lobby waiting for our names to be called i was drawn to the tank of lobsters. you could pick the one you wanted to eat. as each minute rolled by i began to think of how cruel it was to keep them in tanks like this, and it also crossed my mind how they would die... i had no scientific query i just knew they were suffering, you could see it. i recently just finished a book about the slave trade, on the ships they would stack tortoises upside down for the journey, this kept them alive and thus fresh to be eaten on the weeks long voyages across the atlantic ocean. you realize they didn't have refrigeration so keeping animals alive on the seas was crucial to feeding many people. aside from the horror of the slave trade itself what a horrible sight that must have been seeing all those tortoises struggling to get upright and being forced to spend their last days, sometimes weeks upside down.

[@lisamair5780]

All of animal agriculture is pure hell. Lobster is horrifying and unfortunately only one small part. I encourage you to watch Earthlings.

[@soulfuzz368]

Lisa Mair ALL agriculture is hell. We are completely removed of what happens to all of the animals when a field is plowed to grow crops. There is blood on our hands either way.

[@southernelements5527]

@@soulfuzz368 There is a clear difference between the two. One way leads to much less blood and the other causes blood shed in two different ways. There may be no escaping causing suffering but there is making the mindful choice to avoid what can be avoided.

[@soulfuzz368]

Christian Miller no there isn’t. The only difference is that to you, one form of life has more value than others.

[@Livefreeordie-182]

You'd appreciate 'Sea of Slaughter' by Farley Mowatt. Great book.

[@nicolareddwoodd3687]

"When Wallace was dating the writer Mary Karr (who later converted to Catholicism), he often talked about faith with her. Max writes: “Wallace said he was trying to pray, because, even though he did not necessarily believe in God, it seemed like a good thing to do…So for a time Wallace too hoped to receive the sacraments, thinking that if he and Karr were to marry they could have a religious wedding (ultimately the priest told him he had too many questions to be a believer, and he let the issue drop). Wallace’s real religion was always language anyway.”"

[@nursemonika6852]

How sad that he had the misfortune to encounter a Catholic priest, from a pagan religion that worships Mary, instead of Jesus and the Father, and keeps its congregation in ignorance about what the Bible really says. If he had only met a Pastor/Christian who really knew the Bible, and understood Grace, maybe he would have given God a chance...and he would be with us today :(

[@lifeunderthemic]

You too are a waste. Don't think you have the answers and your religion which was manipulated is any better than any other. You read and see words. You waste your time and life. Spew your waste elsewhere or wake up for the first time through Syncretism. It is not your fault but your ignorance after this is. Awaken for the first time or stay in fairytales.

[@88pie88]

Protestant evangelicals are the most degenerate of the christian religions. You invented divorce and homosexual marriage, satanic religion if you ask me.

[@mtb416]

All those who replied to the OP are essentially assholes and run counter to a good deal of Wallace's points and arguments.

[@MichaelWilliams87]

Nurse Monika Why do I EVER read the comments?

[@arielalexandroni2710]

Not the best Yelp review.

[@stratford1]

lmao

[@jtrealfunny]

Thanks for putting this out. It helps me understand DFW as a writer. And this lobster shit is top level writing.

[@mikenegrin6312]

This is a phenomenal article, and probably the best way to convert any omnivorous hipsters into vegetarians, even though DFW never even outright advocates for vegetarianism. However, his work just doesn’t translate to audiobook. There’s the obvious footnote issue (which he does a great job underscoring the difficulty of, and it’s kind of obvious that the idea of an audio version of his essay was someone else’s idea and he’s not doing it voluntarily), as well as how he uses capitalization and parenthetical asides amongst other things, and his essays have so many juicy passages that you just need to read them slowly, and often multiple times, because they’re that loaded.

[@amplethought]

I enjoyed the video, and appreciated the audio footnotes!! Good idea!!

[@Altopasto]

11:44, love that footnote about tourism

[@troydaum4728]

Your work and recordings are incredible! I am so thankful for this content. Do you have plans to try and deartifact any more DFW content? I've been dying to hear more of the lipsky recordings or just anything DFW really haha

[@franciscleary6544]

I worked with a chef from Shanghai and when he "prepared" Lobster he laid the living Lobster on its back and pushed a long narrow Spike (like for a shish kebab) starting at the tail and then up to the Head and then immediately put it in boiling water with the spike still in it. He liked doing it because he said this way the tail didn't curl up and he thought it made the meat taste better. Of all the many ways I have seen Chefs prepare lobsters this did seem the most humane, although still grisly. I think the worst was when a different Chef put them belly down on a charcoal grill.

[@Bjarku]

Supper at mcdonalds. Upper at McDonald’s. 9:20 I dunno why but that glitch made me laugh out loud

[@Misserbi]

I think I know what he means. The title explains everything. What freaks are still holding him to sharing when great writers avoid horrible fates?

[@charliebrown5755]

Its amazing how what people think of as good food changes over time.

[@effexon]

this reminds of similar scenes in House of cards, main character has twisted fetish and cook, black dude describes it to him how porks are tortured.

[@danv8324]

HIS VOICE

[@kate9341]

IKR

[@chistinelane]

I live pretty much smack in the whole lobster popularity zone. Its just horrible how people are so okay with it. I cant understand it

[@wgaule]

A good companion piece to this would be Samuel Beckett's 'Dante and the Lobster'

[@mrJohnDesiderio]

DFW was and will always be brilliant.

[@conoroates]

I believe the part about meat names is the separation of norman aristocracy and anglo-saxon peasantry. Beef, pork etc coming from the root french words and cow, pig being the saxon words. Ie that the people eating the food named the meat and the people producing it named the animals.

[@oliverkaiser8926]

alternate title: a love-letter to lobsters

[@marquezFTW]

I never ate lobster and now I never will.

[@JD1340]

I love how it starts with chill NPR vibes then spirals into a dark expose on animal rights and intranational tourism.

[@invincible1903]

I listened to this while cooking and now im sitting here with a delicious plate of food and zero desire to eat anything ever again. Thanks Mr. Wallace :)

[@420happyhippy]

"And as you can imagine, it is... unimaginable." LMFAO!!!

[@jtconner7599]

Geez I lived on the Maine midcoast in 2013, I only missed DFW by 10 years. Shit

[@JoeyTaylor-zh7pg]

the trumpet intro loudly overlapping david was so offensive tho

[@Fonzleberry]

"Please know it's not my fault" DFW lacked the awareness of audiobook listeners when he wrote this.

[@mtb416]

Fonzleberry Funny, I thought he was winking at the mix room when he said that.

[@sandraholding8456]

I will always love and miss him, and I never even met him. But oh how I wish I had.

[@thisisallthereis]

Lobsters are people too

[@tishgrier]

hilarious....just so hilarious. Wallace's reading is so earnest, then punctuated with such crazy in the notes, thus showing us his lively mind and the inane and often bloated way that publications want writers to write for them. omg..as a writer I am still so dying laughing because I feel every single one of those footnotes. they are as familiar as the things that run through my mind when writing academic stuff. He was, truly, a writer's writer.

[@FirstLast-gm9nu]

"the logic of this preference entails suffering relation may be easiest to see in the negative case" DFW makes me feel slightly less insecure about talking like a logician

[@Malygosblues]

An excellent essay. My favorite part is that DFW genuinely seems befuddled while at the same time invested. Did I catch it right that he marks a study saying it takes 30 seconds in boiling water for the lobster to perish? Call me cruel or jaded but...all this philosophic fuss over a 30 second window of pain for an amoral invertebrate.

[@Thomas-xn4tk]

That they are solitary creatures and would tear each other asunder if allowed because of the intense quarters of their captivity would seem to the first transgression.

[@BestJanet]

"...the magazine of good Living." too funny! What constitutes good living? Eating lobster?! Living in a mansion while other people starve? 400 count sheets? Yikes. Being conscious of the suffering of the animals we consume? Wish he were still around. RIP.

[@Livefreeordie-182]

I do too. I've been watching interviews of him all day. I miss a guy I never even knew.

[@QEsposito510]

Pfft… you can do better than 409-count.

[@scoobydoobie1074]

He would have loved the JRE Game Changers debate

[@Dirty_white_boy]

The one with James Wilks was great. Chris Kresser slithers back into his seat.

[@visar.berisha]

Does anyone know what that trumpet music in the intro is called?

[@Tweston3ny]

Do you think his endnotes are insertions post facto for clarification?

[@bearfoot843]

Everything which is alive suffers

[@hagertt]

Point being?

[@hagertt]

oznerolk Agreed. That's why practicing veganism is the only ethical way to diet.

[@hagertt]

ImmortalKing2020 Plants do not have a central nervous system. They are not sentient. They have no will to live. Apples and oranges.

[@evl457]

there's increasing evidence that plants suffer, or rather, they know when they're being attacked, and communicate this chemically to their plant neighbors!

[@Ghazithasoulja]

@@evl457 True!

[@duewhit310]

Footnote voice: pinches nose closed

[@pilgrimwagnerr]

12:58 - 14:30 holy shit i have been trying to put this in words for over a decade

[@juliehartley3510]

Do you have a version of this speech without the background music? It is off putting.

[@Titus-as-the-Roman]

Disclaimer: I do care about the mistreatment of of all complex lifeforms, I'm currently on a program that routinely donates money to the ASPCA and am involved in Spay/neuter programs. My grandparents (I was born in 1957), lived on a small farm in south central Ky., I suppose you could call them poor but they didn't "Act" like they were, they raised and slaughtered their own chickens and pigs and raised beef cattle plus row crops for income. This was a matter of survival for them, however the animals were properly took care of, and killed in the most humane way possible. They Were good gentle people. I would live the same way if possible.

[@Monsterassassin3]

I really like that you mention this, I think its really easy for people to forget that up until very recently, we didnt have much of a choice but to farm and kill and eat animals. I think its important that people recognize the difference between a massive industrial farm that tortures thousands of livestock on a daily basis and the kind of farm your grandparents had. Also, was this farm close to a place like Richmond? Im from KY as well

[@Titus-as-the-Roman]

@@Monsterassassin3, Outside Campbellsville. My Brother lives in Richmond

[@genellege]

are they accidental repetitions or is that part of the article? Sounds like a mistake..

[@p3k1n0]

could be a mistake of the audio editor, there are no errors in the article and it doesn't seem like DFW's fault. Could be that they made him read the article in chunks and didn't "glued" them together perfectly :)

[@genellege]

yes true or perhaps the way it was uploaded? I love how he exclaims 'please know that it's not my fault' about the different main and footnote audio. Made me lol

[@anthonymanzalji]

mistake..

[@luks655]

Did DFW just turn me into a vegan?

[@just83542]

Making you conscious is not exactly the same thing, but perhaps it's easier to swear off animal protein than to be confronted with the unfamiliar reality of the situation that modern society tends to isolate us from. Most of humanity for most of history never had the privilege of being so distant from the means of their own survival, and so able to take an objective outsiders perspective on ones own role and participation in the Darwinian selection that was required. While we no longer have the desperation that once biased us toward survival, this is only as a byproduct of capitalism, which seems inceasingly under rhetorical attack by popular politicians despite it being responsible for our abundance and luxury, enabling such a dispassionate approach to these moral questions. While a similarly Bourgeois morality without the sheer necessity that pressured most of humanity is somewhat unavoidable (thankfully, for the time being at least) you may be interested by Michael Pollan exploring similar questions more practically in The Omnivores Dilemma.

[@just83542]

@phil hall there are plenty of examples of nonhuman animals killing and hunting for reasons not related to food. I remember an outcry about Japanese people hunting Dolphins in a "murder cove" being met by footage of Dolphins hunting and slaughtering porpoises in a very similar fashion. And Chimpanzee murder parties are a well known phenomenon. I don't believe that inflicting pain, suffering, and death are as unnatural as you suppose. That's not to say that natural is a synonym for good... Of course reduction in harm is usually better than what's natural, which is your argument for unnatural but less violent veganism. However, while some people can demonstrably live a vegan lifestyle, that's a far cry from saying everyone ought to... A vegan diet does not work for everyone. Rather, advocating for a more plant based diet for most people is probably a good idea, and severe reduction in factory farming would be even better.

[@fatlardshowernow234]

Manically laconic, lol

[@suearipotch1278]

I had the pleasure (mostly) of working in the kitchen of an outdoor school for a few summers, and one of the things we did was to have a big feast for a group of affluent benefactors of the school. The main dish was baked stuffed lobster, which meant that we stabbed a hundred twenty live lobsters in the head. I have held in my memory the sound of the screams of the lobster. I did run out of the room, covering my ears, when I heard the first couple, when I realized that's what it was. (footnote: I am an artist, and my imagination is active, but I truly believe I heard high-pitched screaming) I wonder if there are other chefs who've stabbed them in the head that hear nothing.

[@chynnhowe]

Sue Aripotch I’m a Chef and you are correct; Lobsters do scream.

[@hippocrates1297]

Lobsters do not and cannot scream, unless by scream you mean make noise when heated to the point that the fluids in thier bodies vaporize and escape lethally, in which case they can indeed "scream" but that's a very different thing than a human scream. That's not to say anything about wether or not they suffer, they just dont scream. It was in the reading by the way, he mentions specifically that lobsters vant scream and why.

[@chrisweaver7132]

Wounder how DFW would of felt about twitch travel streamers.

[@harisubramanian4165]

What's this about? Can someone explain

[@Edward-wc8yv]

David, can you prepare a talk entitled CONSIDER THE PRIME RIB DINNER ? I got hungry.

[@kate9341]

Я нахожу его голос очень красивым и уютным

[@kailin2017]

Man, I really want lobster now

[@vegancodingnovice9468]

kailin2017 closest thing i have is potatos

[@fookingmrsschwein698]

I don't understand how people can be so psychopathic. I wish you would consider therapy.

[@rusty_rockets]

There’s always one...

[@noelliebtsie]

@@fookingmrsschwein698 I think they're very frightened of feeling anything, so they bluster like this.

[@Albeit_Jordan]

D.F. Wallace: Consider the lobster... Jordan Peterson: I'm listening...

[@Brightandheavy]

It sounds to me like Prof. Jordan Peterson ran into his own Lobster issues because of how the science unfortunately gets in the way of profits.

[@andreamanninfiaschi1679]

You would eat anything when you're hungry. It just depends on the pricing point.

[@Trisador9]

1) It sounds like you're insinuating a situation in whih one is desparate for food. How, then, does price matter at all? 2) What does this have to do with the essay? The essay explicitly makes the points about 'gourmet' eating (it was written for Gourmet Magazine) that (i) we do have a choice of our sources of protein, and such sources include non-animal ones, (ii) good eating is not merely about fulfilling your nutritional needs, but about the aestethics and mode of living around it.

[@andreamanninfiaschi1679]

​@@Trisador9 Yes, this works for a luxurious-media oriented country like the USA. In Russia, you just eat it. You're right: when you're hungry, what's the point in price? Well, it depends. If it costs too much, you can spend for weapons to acquire that food anyway.

[@withnobodyelse]

Lobsters are cool

[@AnnaLVajda]

What about force feeding ducks to eat their fatty livers?

[@Albeit_Jordan]

I feel like this guy is the american tim minchin

[@thewraith93]

31:34 on euphemisms for higher animals cow/beef etc

[@shivapazoki1881]

humanity lost him so soon ....

[@insulinpet2390]

Thats where jordan peterson got the lobster bullshit from

[@Hannah_Rachel_and_Kotik]

Gosh l want a lobster now. Humanely killed, of course.

[@alexandrac9536]

the background music was annoying. i read this article and it is great.

[@GatorRepublican]

Native Americans gave thanks to God for the animal and thanks to the animal for their sacrifice. That makes perfect sense to me.

[@ophello]

Lobster is creepy.

[@djcarl4596]

I save my appetite for crab and lobster for the bayside boil ups and crab houses when I vacation on the coast. Cheaper, fresher and only time I enjoy eating bugs.

[@chloegrobler4275]

eating animals is wrong. saved alot of time for you if that's the reason you watched this video.

[@yendornosnibor4293]

I freeze the crustaceans

[@blahblahblahblahbla2705]

There are limits to

[@annalisavajda252]

Well it's interesting in the context of marketing if lobster was once just considered bottom feeder food unfit for decent folks and is now considered a delicacy. It's like diamonds vs quartz crystal that you can find sometimes just in a gravel pit how much effort now goes into trapping and catching lobsters or caged vs free range chickens either organic happy hens have more expensive eggs too for example. I also recall writing a speech when I was 9 or 10 about animal cruelty in the tuna fishing and cosmetic industry and it wasn't overly popular in the crowd of farmers hunters and anglers and their wives that sold Avon in 1988 or so but now there are little dolphins on cans of tuna and little rabbits on makeup to indicate less cruelty. I don't think lobster is so wonderful personally usually not worth the money anymore most things taste better with butter and garlic Florida could do it with alligators too I reckon people can turn vegan also if they don't like ingesting dead creatures.

[@onekerri1]

OFF WITH THE BACKGROUND MUSIC.

[@deshipe]

To answer the question: As a meat eater, how do you ethically deal with the slaughter of animals for food. 1. David compares kicking a stone and kicking a mouse. The stone is unharmed but the mouse is, and the mouse prefers not to be kicked. Perform a similar comparison between a stalk of corn and a chicken harvested for food. The chicken is harmed and would prefer not be slaughtered. But is the stalk of corn also harmed? Would it prefer not to be cut down? In either case, you are killing something alive for food. Why do we consider it morally superior to kill only plants? If it is not morally superior to eat only plants, and you must eat to survive, does it matter which form of life you kill? What foods are "safe" and do no harm. Fruit comes to mind, as harvesting an apple does not harm the apple tree. In fact, the apple may have evolved to entice deer to eat them and spread the apple seeds far away from the tree. Seeds dropped directly by the parent tree would have to compete with the parent for water and sunlight. How about unfertilized chicken eggs? The parent chicken is unharmed and the egg is inert without the rooster. Extracting cows milk does not harm the cow, but is it harmed by the injection of hormones to force to produce milk? Also, for both the cow and the chicken what do you feed them so that you can harvest the milk and eggs? 2. Does the moral question only arise due to the abundance of food? If food were not so easily available, then moral justification could be the starvation death of a human versus the slaughter of an animal. David says he would feel this is morally right, but is concerned because man today has alternatives to eating meat and boils lobsters for culinary pleasure. A few generations ago in America food was not that plentiful. Less than one hundred years ago if you wanted chicken you wrung it's neck and plucked it. You had to be fully aware of what you were doing. Now we simply walk into a grocer and buy a chicken breast. We can choose to be unaware of slaughter of the chicken.

[@SymbolicDrummer]

Plants do not have a nervous system. Of any kind. Plants do not have preferences. Your second argument is predicated by the fact that people ate animals for survival and no longer have to. Yes. Perfect. It doesn't mean that the animals our ancestors ate didn't suffer. They did. The moral obligation to not cause undue suffering NOW exists because eating meat is no longer necessary for survival.

[@owenwalker1774]

David Foster Wallace clearly referred to another author for the mouse rock comparison. He did not himself make the comparison.

[@JohnDoe-zh6cp]

@@SymbolicDrummer Well said.

[@badwerds]

If plants don't have preferences, why do they release chemicals to ward off parasitic insects, and why do they grow towards the sun?

[@Thomas-xn4tk]

I’d urge you listen again. Beyond the boiling lobster alive debate, corporate animal farming on a mass scale lends itself to extreme treatment of animals. That is the heart of the animal cruelty debate. Some outliers are against killing animals all together, and yes DFW intuitively raises the question of eating animals at all, but the vast majority of people who take umbrage are balking at leviathan such as Tyson “Farms”. Eating animals raised in pastures from a personal farm vs giant warehouses packing millions of birds into spaces that disable them from walking for the entirety of their lives are two separate issues.

[@seanl2930]

Man I feel hungry from that first bit

[@krainey]

Jordan Peterson bangs on about lobster in one of his books

[@mitchwebster5088]

Why would you ever read one of his books? And don’t compare a legend like DFW to a boner like JP