I don’t like the word (in-)humane. Etymologically human and humane have the same origin (big surprise). But, humane got purportedly human characteristics attached to it and now means something different. Though, for example, they translate to the same word in German (menschlich). I’d like to suggest a little thought experiment:
Whenever somebody says “X is humane.”, ask yourself: Would it exist, if humans did not exist? If the answer is yes, humane is not the right word.
Whenever somebody says “X is inhumane.”, ask yourself: Would it exist if humans didn’t exist? If the answer is no, inhumane is a very poor and misleading choice of word. And the opposite is the case: Evedently, X is very human; Hence humane is a poor fit too, because there is obviously a conflict in meaning.
Example: Building machines to shred millions of chicks is inhumane. Well, without humans such machines wouldn’t exist, hence inhumane is a poor choice of word. Humane can’t be a good choice either, because of the conflicting meaning.
Bonus: Here, have some synonyms for in-/humane, that almost always are a better fit, whatever the context:
-
humane
- compassionate
- benevolent
- kind
-
inhumane
- ruthless
- merciless
- cruel
What you are describing is precisely why the animal agriculture industry uses the word humane and why we should point out the hypocrisy. Very few people would agree if they said that what they were doing is “benevolent”, “kind”, or “compassionate”. It would be pretty obvious that that’s not the case. But by using a word like humane which our culture has muddied they can get away with it. That’s why we have to call them out when they talk about “humane” methods of slaughter or that the way they treat the animals is “humane”.
I mean, they wouldn’t even be wrong if they said it was human. And by extention, one could argue that it was humane, when applying the origional meaning of the word. In my opinion people would be just as incorrect by saying what they were doing was inhumane. My beef here really is with the words humane and inhumane. The way people use these words, is perpetuating a lie about human character. Both words shouldn’t be used at all. Genocide is (in)human(e), slavery is (in)human(e), *ism is (in)human(e), …, pretty much every form of cruelty present on planet Earth is (in)human(e)*.
*) to be read as human, humane, inhumane (excluding inhuman)
If you use this way of thinking then the words humane and inhumane completely lose all meaning and the conversation is completely pointless. Regardless of the etymology of a word, what matters is the way that they are being used presently by society. And presently, no one uses the word “humane” to mean “something that a human does” because there is simply no reason to have a word that means that. It conveys very little useful information. And when the animal agriculture industry says that its practices are “humane” they are not saying “a human is performing these actions”. They are very clearly trying to imply that what they are doing is “good” without actually saying it because of how ridiculous it would sound.
That’s actually illegal in Germany since 2019 or so. We now have egg scanners that can determine the embryo’s sex early on and destroy the rooster eggs.
