Philosophyopoly: Fox hunting

Dear J

Right. Fox hunting. At a recent Invocal performance, a gentleman stood up and recited a little poem about a fox hunt he had been on. “It’ll be controversial, this,” he warned.

So it turned out. I listened with some discomfort to his descriptions of a friend of his called Colin writhing and pumping and pulsing and sweating and heaving beneath him.

If this is what fox hunting’s all about, no wonder middle England is upping arms over it, I thought.

(Up in arms or upping arms – I prefer the latter. It makes more sense.)

To take my mind off whatever proclamations our poetic gentleman saw fit to make in a public place, I got to pondering the rights and wrongs of fox hunting. My workings are shown below:

Do I agree with fox hunting?
Do I agree with the unnecessary suffering of animals? [yes/no]
Are economic reasons good enough to curtail natural order? [yes/no]
If yes: Must fox numbers be kept down for economic reasons? [yes/no] (though I don’t have evidence)
If yes: Is hunting the method that causes least suffering in dispatching foxes? [yes/no] (I assume not)
If no: Is sport a good reason to use anything other than the ‘least suffering’ method? [yes/no]
Result: I don’t agree with fox hunting.

As you can see, there are several areas that need watertight evidence, but I’ve carried it through to my current conclusion. Anyone could disagree with the idea that suffering in animals is a bad thing, I suppose, or that the economy should overrule the natural order of things.

By the way, I needn’t have gone green at the gills at the poetry reading. Colin, it turns out, was our poet’s trusty steed. I wish he’d said that in the first place.

And I’m still not altogether sure that’s not worse…

jx