My belief in quantum theory was reinforced by a series of electrical outages and equipment breakdowns that occurred when I visited slaughter plants where cattle and pigs were being abused. The first time it happened, the main power transformer blew up as I drove up the driveway. Several other times a main power panel burned up and shut down the plant. In another case, the main chain conveyor broke while the plant manager screamed obscenities at me during an equipment startup. He was angry because full production was not attained in the first five minutes. Was it just chance, or did bad karma start a resonance in an entangled pair of subatomic particles within the wiring or steel? These were all weird breakdowns of things that usually never break. It could be just random chance, or it could be some sort of cosmic consciousness of God.
Many neuroscientists scoff at the idea that neurons would obey quantum theory instead of old everyday Newtonian physics. The physicist Roger Penrose, in his book the Shadows of the Mind, and Dr. Stuart Hameroff, a Tucson physician, state that movement of single electrons within the microtubules of the brain can turn off consciousness while allowing the rest of the brain to function. If quantum theory really is involved in controlling consciousness, this would provide a scientific basis for the idea that when a person or animal dies, an energy pattern of vibrating entangled particles would remain. I believe that if souls exist in humans, they also exist in animals, because the basic structure of the brain is the same. It is possible that humans have greater amounts of soul because they have more microtubules where single electrons could dance, according to the rules of quantum theory.
However, there is one thing that completely separates people from animals. It is not language or war or toolmaking; it is long-term altruism. During a famine in Russia, for example, scientists guarded the seed bank of plant genetics so that future generations would have the benefits of genetic diversity in food crops. For the benefit of others, they allowed themselves to starve to death in a lab filled with grain. No animal would do this. Altruism exists in animals, but not to this degree. Every time I park my car near the National USDA Seed Storage Lab at Colorado State University, I think that protecting the contents of this building is what separates us from animals.
I do not believe that my profession is morally wrong. Slaughtering is not wrong, but I do feel very strongly about treating animals humanely and with respect. I've devoted my life to reforming and improving the livestock industry. Still, it is a sobering experience to have designed one of the world's most efficient killing machines. Most people don't realize that the slaughter plant is much gentler than nature. Animals in the wild die from starvation, predators, or exposure. If I had a choice, I would rather go through a slaughter system than have my guts ripped out by coyotes or lions while I was still conscious. Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.
Recently I read an article that had a profound effect on my thinking. It was entitled «The Ancient Contract,» by S. Budiasky, and it was published in the March 20, 1989, issue of U.S. News & World Report. It presented a natural historical view of our evolving relationship with animals. This view presents a middle ground between the supporters of animal rights, who believe that animals are equal to humans, and the Cartesian view, which treats animals as machines with no feelings. I added the biological concept of symbiosis to Budiasky's view. A symbiotic relationship is a mutually beneficial relationship between two different species. For example, biologists have learned that ants tend aphids and use them as «dairy cows.» The ants feed the aphids, and in return the aphids give a sugar substance to the ants. People feed, shelter, and breed cattle and hogs, and in return the animals provide food and clothing. We must never abuse them, because that would break the ancient contract. We owe it to the animals to give them decent living conditions and a painless death. People are often confused by the paradox of my work, but to my practical, scientific mind it makes sense to provide a painless death for the cattle I love. Many people are afraid of death and can't stand to face it.
Often I get asked if I am a vegetarian. I eat meat, because I believe that a totally vegan diet, in which all animal products are eliminated, is unnatural. Even the Hindus, traditionally vegetarian people, eat dairy products. A completely vegan diet is deficient in vitamin B12, and using dairy products does not eliminate killing animals. A cow has to have a calf every year in order to give milk, and the calves are raised for meat.
But someday in the distant future, when slaughterhouses become obsolete and livestock is replaced with products of gene splicing, the real ethical questions regarding the creation of any kind of animal or plant we desire will seem far more significant than killing cattle at the local slaughter plant. Humans will have the power to control their own evolution. We will have the power of God to create totally new forms of life. However, we will never be able to answer the question of what happens when we die. People will still have a need for religion. Religion survived when we learned that the earth was not the center of the universe. No matter how much we learn, there will always be unanswerable questions. Yet if we stop evolving, we will stagnate as a species.
Bernard Rollin, a philosopher on animal rights issues at Colorado State University, points out, «It is true that free inquiry is integral to our humanity, but so too is morality. So the quest for knowledge must be tempered with moral concern.» A total lack of moral concern can lead to atrocities such as the Nazi medical experiments, but medical knowledge was also delayed for a thousand years because of religious taboos about the dissection and study of human bodies. We must avoid intellectual stagnation, which retards the progress of medical knowledge, but we must be moral. Biotechnology can be used for noble, frivolous, or evil purposes. Decisions on the ethical use of this powerful new knowledge should not be made by extremists or people purely motivated by profit. There are no simple answers to ethical questions.
There is a basic human drive to figure out who and what we are. The mega-science projects of the 1990s, such as the Human Genome Project, the Hubble space telescope, and the now defunct supercollider, replace the pyramids and cathedrals of our ancestors. One of the main purposes of the Hubble space telescope was to enable us to see all the way to the beginning of the universe. It has confirmed the existence of black holes in the center of other galaxies, and its observations may radically change our theories about the origin of the universe. Some recent Hubble observations are beginning to establish the existence of other planets circling around in alternate solar systems. Years ago, scientists were burned at the stake for talking and writing about these ideas.
As a person whose disability has provided me with certain abilities, especially with regard to understanding how animals sense the world, I appreciate these difficult questions and the importance of religion as a moral ordering code for empathic, just behavior.
When the combination of organophosphate poisoning and antidepressant drugs dampened my religious emotions, I became a kind of drudge who was capable of turning out mountains of work. Taking the medication had no effect on my ability to design equipment, but the fervor was gone. I just cranked out the drawings as if I were a computer being turned on and off. It was this experience that convinced me that life and work have to be infused with meaning, but it wasn't until three years ago, when I was hired to tear out a shackle hoist system, that my religious feelings were renewed.
It was going to be a hot Memorial Day weekend, and I was not looking forward to going to the new equipment startup. I thought it would be pure drudgery. The kosher restraint chute was not very interesting technically, and the project presented very little intellectual stimulation. It did not provide the engineering challenge of inventing and starting something totally new, like my double-rail conveyor system.
Little did I know that during those few hot days in Alabama, old yearnings would be reawakened. I felt totally at one with the universe as I kept the animals completely calm while the rabbi performed shehita. Operating the equipment there was like being in a Zen meditational state. Time stood still, and I was totally, completely disconnected from reality. Maybe this was nirvana, the final state of being that Zen meditators seek. It was a feeling of total calmness and peace until I was snapped back to reality when the plant manager called me to come to his office. He had spent hours hiding in the steel beams of the ceiling, secretly watching me hold each animal gently in the restraining chute. I knew he was fascinated, but he never asked me anything about it.
When it was time to leave, I cried as I drove to the airport. The experience had been so strangely hypnotic that I was tempted to turn around and return to the plant. As I turned in the rental car and checked in at the gate, I thought about the similarities between the wonderful trancelike feeling I had had while gently holding the cattle in the chute and the spaced-out feeling I had had as a child when I concentrated on dribbling sand through my fingers at the beach. During both experiences all other sensation was blocked. Maybe the monks who chant and meditate are kind of autistic. I have observed that there is a great similarity between certain chanting and praying rituals and the rocking of an autistic child. I feel there has to be more to this than just getting high on my own endorphins.
On January 11, 1992, I returned to the kosher plant and made the following entry in my diary:
