Our Ghost, Part Five: The Forcing Shed
Maybe civilisation is inhuman, in every sense
There is a thing called a forcing shed, and it works like this:
A pork farm is a machine which has evolved to produce as much profit as possible from turning pigs into saleable meat. As I imagine you already know, many of the details of how it does this are extremely grim. All the same, a forcing shed stands out as one of the grimmest.
The device is a very small cage in which a female pig is kept enclosed, unable to move in any way. Immobile, she is artificially inseminated— and made to have as many young as she possibly can. On birth, they are then taken away for a life that is only a tiny bit less grim than hers. For in order to turn pigs into meat, there needs to be a way you can produce more pigs than you have. And in a Box which has evolved to maximise profits, the welfare of a pig is of no necessary consequence.
In the eyes of a Box, the pig in the forcing shed is only a machine; existing to manufacture flesh as another might manufacture cars. But like most pigs, eventually the flesh that makes her up is made into meat as well— but poor quality meat, good for pork pies or sausage rolls. By the end, a life of total immobility will have taken its toll.
When I first heard of the forcing shed, it occurred to me that it seemed more cruel than many of the worst punishments which I’d ever heard of. But of course, no cruelty is needed for it to come about. As Steinbeck said, a bank can continue to operate while everyone hates what it does. The same principle remains just as true of a slaughterhouse.
There are those who say we should not fear a future where humanity no longer holds power. They argue that when we no longer need to work, the world will still find things for us to do. That there must always be a place for us in the world, even once we have lost any say in it.
And when they do, I think of the forcing shed— and I cannot bring myself to feel optimistic.
Inhuman practices
It’s easy – and it’s right – to say that the forcing shed is an awful thing. It’s tempting to say that that human beings should never have created it.
But maybe there’s an extent to which we did not create it, exactly. In a world which is ruled by Boxes, perhaps we’re closer to the ones inside the cages than the things which ultimately constructed them. That thought is why I can’t share in the disgust for humanity that feels so natural for us – as humans – to have. I’m no longer sure that we are what’s destroying the world, as much as a part of what’s being destroyed.
Of course, that risks letting us off the hook to some degree. There are those of us who are able to fight the worst injustices in the world, and to change them. And I think there are still more of us who would, if we were consistently aware of them. I expect if any of us could see the level of injustice in the world, then we would go insane.
I do not think it is fair to say humans take no responsibility for this kind of violence, which we can still indeed be responsible for. Very often, a human does. But when our attempts to take responsibility are fighting against a Box that has reason to obscure it, we might find it difficult to succeed. Violence against people and animals is kept far away from the people who buy products that violence depends on. Even if it wasn’t, it’s often beyond human ability to trace a causal link between any individual act of violence and an action we make in the world.
This is one of the reasons I’m suspicious of the way the phrase treating people like animals is often used. I think it suggests a person who treats another human being in a way which completely strips them of worth and dignity. The implication is that we would treat an animal in such a way— after all, we do so with inventions such as the forcing shed.
But this is a view which fails to distinguish the actions of an individual with the actions of a Box. For individuals, I think the saying often has things the wrong way around. We can – and often do – treat animals far better than we treat each other. When we meet non-human animals, we often do indeed treat them without judgement, with empathy, and with love. But we might often be reluctant to extend this to other people, or to ourselves.
And I wonder if – in part – this is because we come to see the actions of a Box as the same thing as the actions of any individual stranger. Without any knowledge of Boxes, we can start to think that humans and human civilisation are the same thing. But with it, civilisation can start to look actively threatening to humans. Individuals treat animals with compassion and empathy, and the systems we are a part of treat them as completely expendable. It’s hard not to think those systems will treat us in the same way, when we have no power at all.
When seen in this light, civilisation starts to look inhuman in more ways than one. It hasn’t exactly been built by us. We don’t exactly control it. And there are circumstances in which it will turn against human beings.
But of course, this isn’t always how we talk about it in our everyday lives— either to each other, or to ourselves. Often, we say that the worst things civilisation does are because of us. And we do this, I think we end up with the worst of both worlds: feeling responsible for something which we have no control over, at the same time as we feel that lack of control. We are at once intensely guilty at the destruction we are held responsible for, and intensely stressed at our seeming inability to enact any change.
And I think this starts to make sense of where a lot of us are right now, in both our bodies and minds. These days, I have a feeling that Our Ghost is something many people are half aware of. On some level, we might suspect we have lost control over the world— although perhaps not that we never really had any.
We like to think of ourselves as living in a non-religious time, and in some ways, this is true. But even if we are able to openly state that we do not believe in God, there are other beliefs that can still feel difficult to say we don’t believe in.
For my part, I’ve found it hard to see the world in this way, and harder to openly admit that I now do. To be stuck in a dying paradigm – half in and half out – is often a very disorienting thing.
It can feel a bit like falling into another world.