[MUSIC] Consider the lobster. In this lesson, we'll consider not only the lobster, but the article of this title written by the late David Foster Wallace, it appeared in Gourmet magazine in 2004, and it was included with other essays by Foster, in a book entitled Consider the Lobster, which was published the next year. It's title alludes to a 1941 book, Consider the Oyster, which was written by the food writer M.F.K Fisher, about the history and method of eating oysters. It's important to understand where our food comes from, especially since where most of it comes from today is so inhumane. It's just as important to understand our thoughts about our food and ourselves and these two things in relation to the world around us. In this light, Wallace's article is deeply thought provoking in a different way. For the article, Wallace traveled to coastal Maine for the annual lobster festival. The article starts as a witty, sometimes snobbish set of observations, but swerves into something altogether less comfortable when Wallace poses the question, "Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" I don't imagine that most of you sit around eating lobster or even eating it at all. But if you've ever eaten it, even if you've ever been around the eating of lobster, you can grasp Wallace's point in wondering what all right might mean in the context of boiling a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure. You probably don't use the word gustatory regularly either. For those of you who read it and didn't know what it means and didn't bother to look it up, it refers to the sense of taste. Wallace is asking us how we can justify boiling a living, feeling being alive just because we think it tastes good. Of course, some of you probably don't think Lobster tastes good or you haven't tasted it at all. But that shouldn't prevent you from getting Wallace's point. As he writes, "I'm not trying to give you a peta like screed here, at least I don't think so. I'm trying rather 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. The truth is that if you, the festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the Maine lobster Festival can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or Medieval torture Fest." He's not trying to get us to become members of people for the ethical treatment of animals. He simply asking us to consider whether tasting good might just be the puneus justification for killing another living being. Moreover, he points out through the essay that all signs point to the fact that the lobster does indeed feel pain upon being placed in boiling water. Wallace writes, "The basic scenario is that we come in from the store and make our little preparations, like getting the kettle filled and boiling. Then we lift the lobsters out of the bag or whatever retail container they came home in, whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen." Then comes one uncomfortable thing after another. All of which lead us to conclude with Wallace that, "The lobster acts as if it's in terrible pain." Wallace details some of the methods that have been used to try to minimize the pain, while still keeping the flavor intact. He writes, "Some cooks practice is to drive a sharp, heavy knife point fast into a spot just above the midpoint between the lobsters eye stocks." He also writes, "Another alternative is to put the lobster in cold saltwater and then very slowly bringing it up to a full boil. Cooks who advocate this method are going mostly on the analogy to a frog, which can supposedly be kept from jumping out of a boiling pot by heating the water incrementally. In order to save a lot of research summarizing, I'll simply assure you that the analogy between frogs and lobsters turns out not to hold." If people who regularly cook lobster have to go to the trouble of finding ways to get lobster not to react to being boiled alive, you know there's some reason behind it. That reason seems to be that the lobster feels and therefore suffers. Cooks who tried to minimize the lobsters reaction are taking a utilitarian approach. They want to be able to eat the lobster, but they also recognize that they should spare the lobster any unnecessary suffering. The question of what amount of suffering should be necessary has probably occurred to you already, of course. What makes consider the lobster so good for our purposes is not Wallace's detailing of the various ways that lobsters are "Prepared for cooking." It's not his references to comparative neuroanatomy and hard core philosophy that are required to discuss behaviors associated with pain and suffering. Rather, what makes the essay so good, is Wallace's his ability to lure us into the depths of self-reflected moral inquiry with him. In the end, Wallace doesn't demand that we stop eating lobster. Instead, he asks us to do something much more difficult, that we think about our actions.
