Anthony Burgess once wrote a brief novel entitled A Clockwork Orange. It was one of at least three that he wrote in one year, though he claimed five and a half with his usual embroidery of the facts. As the not entirely accurate story goes, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour and given a year to live, so he decided to write as many books as possible in that one year to leave some kind of passive income for his first wife, who suffered from alcoholism.
Whether it was three or whether it was five and a half, it’s still a substantial achievement by any standards, not least because at least three of the novels he submitted for publication that year are stone-cold classics, and one in particular is still a bestseller over sixty years later. The classics, in case you were curious, were The Wanting Seed, Inside Mr Enderby and of course, A Clockwork Orange.
One of the reasons why A Clockwork Orange became so renowned is because of the cinematic adaptation by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, and the subsequent media meltdown about droog-style hooliganism attributed by tabloids to the novel and movie. This made both film and book cult artistic artifacts. But another reason is because A Clockwork Orange is one of the most succinct defences ever mounted in favour of human free will.
Alex, the teenage anti-hero of the novel, is a rapist of children, a multiple murderer, a violent, drug-addled hoodlum prone to bouts of ‘ultraviolence’ and random attacks on the general public. He is, in short, as unpleasant in his actions as any human could conceivably be. In his words, however, he is quite alluring. He is charming, creative, an appreciator of classical music, a clever coiner of his own invented phrases and language. It is the gap between his inner and outer worlds which makes A Clockwork Orange such a continually interesting book.
This brings me, as I’m sure you have guessed, to the possible societal benefits of insect bloodsucking and the recent proposal to make such benefits mandatory. No? Ok, let me explain. The bite of the lone star tick causes a condition called alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), which is notable for having one sole physiological effect – it causes an allergic reaction to the consumption of red meat. Now, this reaction is unpleasant but not fatal.
Furthermore, it is generally understood in contemporary Western society that overconsumption of red meat causes a range of adverse health conditions and that the meat industry itself is a net moral negative, due to the combination of karmic cost to the suffering animals turned to food product and these negative health conditions arising from their excessive consumption. We might add, as a kind of methane cherry on the pie of woe, the contribution that the cattle industry makes to the greenhouse effect, which is warming the planet and contributing to climate change.
In this context arises the modest proposal from two researchers that, instead of trying to find a way to mitigate the AGS effects of a lone star tick bite, instead society ought to be encouraging infection via the insect bloodsuckers as a net good for individuals and the world. By rendering people involuntarily vegan, or at least, making them incapable of consuming red meat, it is argued, society would enjoy a ‘moral bioenhancer’ effect.
Is there a counter-argument that goes beyond the employment destruction in the cattle farming and processing industries, or mere tradition, whether related to food production cuisine or otherwise? I believe there is and it is to be found in Anthony Burgess’s novel. A Clockwork Orange, and in particular the sometimes suppressed final chapter, argues convincingly that it is insufficient to force someone to do good as this strips them of their free will and by extension their very humanity. Rather, it is essential to lead them to goodness, to allow them to make mistakes and mature at their own rate, with due regard for the safety of the rest of society.
I have vegan friends and family. I am, I suppose, probably best described as vegetarian-adjacent myself in that I tend to eat very little to no red meat but reserve the right to do so on occasion. This is not, I accept, a particularly morally integral position, as it varies somewhere between habit and hedonism, without being grounded in any moral argument. But it is the product of my own free will.
What has led me to cut down my consumption of red meat radically in recent years was firstly the aforementioned adverse health effects and learning about them, and secondly finding myself in the company of friends and family who were vegan or vegetarian, but who crucially did not lecture or hector about it, but simply lived their own choice in accordance with their chosen morality, their own free will.
My slow slide towards an increasingly vegetarian diet is a result of their example, not any finger wagging and certainly not any imposition placed upon me from outside. I could say similar things about my minimal consumption of alcohol too. It was the example of moderation among Italians, and minimal consumption among Turks, that led me finally to abandon the kind of excessive drinking that remains so commonplace in Ireland and Britain.
By extension I could foresee being a teetotal vegan at some point. But that would have to be organically reached as a result of my own personal choice and not via an external imposition concocted via a pact between moralising medics and their bloodsucker proxies. In short, I think we all as human beings deserve the right to choose, and we all ought to be granted the opportunity to have the same kind of epiphany which Alex chooses in chapter 21 of A Clockwork Orange, an ending which is notably not to be found in the Kubrick movie.
I have a lot more to say about the cultural impact of A Clockwork Orange, but for that you’ll have to wait for my next academic monograph. More information on that soon I hope.
