Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy

by Richard Greene; K. Silem Mohammad

  In Interview Louis says, “I knew peace only when I killed. When I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm, I knew again what peace could be.” So, another reason that vampires drink human blood is because it brings them a spiritual peace of sorts. But this doesn’t give us the kind of justification Louis might hope for as to whether it is right for vampires to eat people. For example, a cult that derives spiritual satisfaction from human sacrifice would not be morally justified in their practice, especially if the people being sacrificed were unwilling, like the victims of vampires. David Berkowitz claimed a great feeling of peace after his killings as well. Robbing a person of their life for an individual’s temporary spiritual gain fails the simplest moral litmus tests like reversibility, equality, and fairness.

  When Louis is first turned into a vampire, Lestat has to teach him to overcome his feelings of guilt and anguish. “You’ll get used to killing. . . . You’ll become accustomed to things all too quickly.” No doubt, a person can become accustomed to many things, even killing, but Louis feels the guilt that comes with it. Louis gets no spiritual peace from killing people at first. Perhaps the spiritual peace that comes with killing humans is a feeling that comes only through habituation. Only through his love of Claudia, who is arguably more psychotic than Lestat, does Louis ironically lose his humanity and begin to drink human blood. Louis’s love for Claudia encourages him to engage in the habit of drinking human blood, much as the love for a child may encourage a parent to engage in the habit of exercise. In both cases they aid in the improvement of the self for the sake of another, but of course the analogy breaks down when we compare the two morally, which is the question at hand.

  Thus far, we have seen that vampires are moral agents, because they possess both reason and free will; that vampires have a viable alternative to eating humans, namely animals; and that we cannot morally justify drinking human blood over animals via a preference of taste, a fulfillment of maximum potential, or because of a spiritual peace that is derived from it.

  Cold Clammy Consistency

  There is much to be learned from beasts.

  —Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

  If vampires have a moral obligation not to drink human blood, what does that mean for us as humans? On the surface it may allow us simply to say that vampires who kill humans are morally corrupt, which can give us justification for slaying them. More importantly, however, it offers us an opportunity to evaluate our own actions to see if our actions are consistent with what we would demand of vampires. Consistency can be conceived of in a few related but different ways. Consistency may mean a lack of contradiction; that is, it is not possible for both claims to be true at the same time. We cannot within our moral beliefs hold that it is acceptable to stab innocent people in the heart with a stake, and that murder is wrong. Consistency also means that we should apply rules and justifications in a consistent manner. If I use an argument in one case, I must apply that same argument in every similar case, unless there are relevant differences. Consistency in our moral beliefs is imperative. Barring relevant differences, we assign rights and freedoms to everyone consistently. The Golden Rule demands that we treat other people according to the standard by which we would like to be treated, and we expect consistent application of the law. If I were to get ten years in jail for murder and someone else were to get only a fine for the same crime, it would be a gross miscarriage of justice, precisely because the law would not be treating two similar cases equally.

  We have examined and rejected a number of arguments for why it is acceptable for vampires to drink human blood. Vampires get a spiritual peace from eating humans. Vampires need human blood to reach their full potential. Humans are pleasing to the palate of vampires. We’ve also found a reason why vampires should drink the blood of rats rather than humans: More unnecessary suffering is caused when a human dies at the hands of a vampire than when a rat does. If we are to be consistent in our condemnation of vampires for eating humans, then we must examine our human eating habits in a similar fashion. Clearly, cannibalism, a type of human-eating, is wrong under normal circumstances.68 But most people don’t eat other people on a daily basis; instead we eat chicken, pork, or beef, with a generous helping of potatoes. If we are to be consistent in our condemnation of vampires, can we continue eating like this?

  We are in a very similar position to the vampire’s to begin with. We are rational creatures who can reflect upon the morality of our actions. We also have options before us. It’s not absolutely necessary for us to eat meat to survive. There are eight essential amino acids that people need to ingest to survive (ten for children), and they can all be found in plant sources. All vitamins and minerals that are necessary to avoid deficiency diseases like scurvy, pellagra, and rickets can either be manufactured by the body or readily found in fruits and vegetables.69 Vegetarianism is the alternative to the human diet, just as rats are the alternative to the diet of vampires.

  So why do we eat animals? Few would argue that they get some kind of spiritual peace from eating chicken, beef, or pork. But even if they did, it seems like there is a more important concern that we must take into consideration: the pain and suffering inflicted upon animals. To meet the demand of human consumption, animals are often raised in what are known as “factory farms” that aim to produce the greatest amount of meat with the least amount of input in the shortest amount of time. Little concern is given to the animals’ welfare at these farms. Chickens’ beaks are cut off and talons are removed, so they do not peck or scratch each other to death in overcrowded conditions. Pigs’ tails are cut off to prevent them from being chewed on by other pigs. Slaughterhouses (which almost all animals go to before they reach the supermarket) sometimes skin or boil animals alive because their conveyer system runs too quickly for the animal to bleed to death.70 Reducing these creatures’ pain and suffering is much more important than achieving some kind of spiritual peace from eating them. Indeed, it may be rather difficult to attain spiritual peace knowing that the animal you are eating lived a life of painful misery, solely to provide meat at $4.50 a pound instead of $6.00 a pound. The efficiency of the factory farm keeps prices low, but the cost savings is at the expense of the quality of animals’ lives.

  Perhaps humans need to eat meat to reach their fullest potential. Again the question arises: what do we mean by fullest potential? But even if we push that argument aside for the moment, we are faced with yet another problem: the world-class vegetarian athlete. Athletes that win gold medals at the Olympics and hold world records are generally considered the pinnacle of human physical potential. Dave Scott is a six-time Hawaii Iron Man Champion (a triathlon competitor) and a vegetarian. Andreas Cahling won the Olympic gold medal in the ski jump in 1980. Bill Pickering swam from England to France in 14 hours, 6 minutes—a world record time—and is a vegetarian. Bill Pearl won the Mr. Universe Bodybuilding title in 1971, without steroids, on a vegetarian diet.71 These are just a few examples of people who have reached the pinnacle of physical human performance, and are vegetarians. Peter Singer (a philosopher who holds the chair of the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) are all vegetarians who have arguably reached the pinnacle of mental human performance. If fear of not reaching one’s own fullest potential is keeping a person from being a vegetarian, then these examples show that it can be done. It may not be easy, but reaching one’s full physical or mental potential is not an easy task, vegetarian or not.

  Finally, we reach the last argument: that animals are pleasing to the taste of human beings. Just as vampires prefer the taste of human blood, many people prefer the taste of animals. But for the same reasons, this provides little justification for the eating of animals. Morality is not about satisfying our preferences, but rather evaluating our actions and choices to make the best one. I may have an intense desire to bite Kirsten Dunst in the neck, but it would be wrong for me to do so, at least without her (and my wife’s) permissio
n. The wrongness in eating animals stems from the pain and suffering that is caused not only from raising them, but from their unnecessary slaughter. It is unnecessary because we have a viable option to do otherwise—vegetarianism.

  There are many opponents of vegetarianism. Some may argue that animals in the wild will kill each other, so what makes it wrong for us to kill them? The difference is that animals, for the most part, are not moral agents. They cannot think and reflect about their actions in a moral fashion, so they cannot be held morally accountable for their actions. It would be wrong for me to relieve myself on the lawn of a neighbor—in fact I could be arrested for such an act—but my cat would not be arrested for such an act since she doesn’t know any better and cannot do otherwise.

  Some might wonder why vampires should be allowed to eat animals, while humans should not. If vampires could exist without drinking blood of any kind, then perhaps they would have a moral duty to do so as well. But by most accounts vampires need some kind of blood to continue in a minimal way. Usually insanity is the result of a lack of blood for a vampire. When a vampire is insane, he or she cannot reason, and would be free of moral responsibilities not to drink human blood. Much like a person who is so drunk that they are not aware of what they are doing, they technically have no moral responsibilities. However, this is not to say they are off the hook entirely, since they have the ability not to get that drunk in the first place. Similarly if vampires simply refuse blood until they go insane, they can still be held accountable for that action. This accounts for a need to drink blood. Without blood, they cannot be moral agents. So between the lesser of two evils, they should choose to drink animal blood in the most humane way, rather than human blood. When vampires choose to drink human blood they cause unnecessary suffering to the victim and to the victim’s loved ones. Since it is necessary for vampires to eat, choosing to eat a less intelligent animal would cause less suffering. Similarly, we as humans must choose between killing vegetables or animals. Since vegetables cannot feel in any sense of the word, because feeling would require a nervous system of some sort, there would be less pain and suffering generated by eating the plant than the animal.

  The connection between vampires and vegetarians is a simple one: we as human beings are vampiric. We need to ingest life for us to live, just like vampires. But how we choose the life that we ingest determines whether or not we are monstrous like vampires, or virtuous.

  12

  Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t: Vampires and the Hedonistic Paradox

  ROBERT ARP

  The Vampire’s Plight

  How long have I shunned the caress of soft light upon my cheek, how long have I longed to feel the gentle wind in my hair, love in my heart, and hate? Yet, my soul is dead; I cannot feel, cannot see the light of day. Still, my curse is the greatest of gifts. The taste of blood is sweet as the sweetest honey to me. I embrace each passing night of my unlife, and the call of blood is my blessing.

  This anonymous quotation from the Internet captures the plight of the vampire. Imagine having the capacity to live for several lifetimes driven by a thirst for blood, while not really being able to feel or experience what you are going through in those lifetimes. At best, there is some sort of relief when you have had your fill of blood. The hollowed-out life of a junkie might be the closest thing to a vampire’s life we could imagine, with the desire for the next “fix” consuming all of one’s existence.

  Think of Jason Patric’s vampire character, Michael, in Joel Schumacher’s 1987 film The Lost Boys, or Brad Pitt’s vampire character, Louis, in Neil Jordan’s 1994 Interview with the Vampire. When they try to resist their urges for blood, they become wild-eyed, frantic, and driven to “feed their need.” Add to this picture the fact that the vampire is aware of the inability to feel, then one can see how the vampire’s situation kind of sucks (pun intended)! Again, talk to ex-junkies, and they will tell you that they knew their lives were hollowed-out, devoid of anything other than the desire for the next fix.

  Such is the plight of a vampire’s unlife, in a nutshell. I do not mean to say that all vampires in every vampire story have such an unlife. There are vampires who seem to be content with who and what they are, as appears to be the case with the vampire community in the movie Underworld.72 But, there are a great number of vampires in a great number of stories whose unlives really do suck. And a vampire’s unlife can teach us valuable lessons about our own real lives. After all, vampire lore emerges from our innermost desires, not only to live forever, indulge in our basest passions, and be subversive, but to embrace our mortality, control the animal within, and blot out evil wherever it may lurk.73 There are many different vampire stories as well as many different kinds of vampires. As one might expect, the personalities of vampires and the stories told about them are as varied as the authors who tell us the tales.74

  I Am Neither Living nor Dead—I Am Undead

  What is the fundamental nature of a vampire? How and in what form exactly does a vampire exist? These questions are metaphysical in nature. Metaphysics is the area of philosophy that investigates the nature and principles of things that exist. Metaphysicians want to know what really exists in reality, what kinds of things make up reality, and how things are related to one another. If vampires really did exist, then we would see that, as members of the Undead community who make their way around the planet earth, vampires seem to be a composite of a dead material body and an immaterial soul/spirit/mind. This view is akin to a version of metaphysical dualism in the philosophical subdiscipline of metaphysics known as philosophy of mind. According to metaphysical dualism in philosophy of mind, a person is made up of a material body and an immaterial mind.

  Let’s consider two versions of metaphysical dualism, substance dualism and property dualism. According to substance dualism a person is made up of two wholly distinct substances, a mind and a body, that can exist apart from one another. Those who believe in the immortality of the soul are substance dualists because they think that the death of the body does not mean the death of the soul. The soul lives on after the death of the body. According to property dualism a person is one substance that is made up of two wholly distinct properties, an immaterial mental property (the mind and mental states) and a material bodily property (the brain and neurophysiological states). On this view, the mind and brain are distinct properties of some one person similar to the way “roundness” and “blackness” are distinct properties found in the one period at the end of this sentence. Just as we can distinguish the property of roundness from the property of blackness in some one period, so too, we can distinguish an immaterial mental property from a material bodily property in some one person. However, just as the roundness and blackness of that particular period can exist only while that particular period exists, so too, according to property dualists the mental and bodily properties of a person can exist only while that person is alive. So when we delete the period, the properties of roundness and blackness in that particular period cease to exist along with the period. Likewise, when a person dies, both that person’s body and mind cease to exist. Such a view of mind in relation to body seems to be consistent with scientific data, and is appealing to those who do not believe in the immortality of the soul.75

  According to some vampire stories, the vampire’s cursed soul will continue to live on in hell or some other non-worldly realm after its dead body has been destroyed, indicating a substance form of dualism. This seems to be the case for Lestat, Louis, and the other vampires in Anne Rice’s stories; also, Bram Stoker undoubtedly had this conception in Dracula. In other stories, the vampire’s soul ceases to exist when its dead body is destroyed by sunlight or a stake through the heart, indicating a property form of dualism. This seems to be the case in Marv Wolfman’s Blade the Vampire Slayer comic book series as well as with Carol Jones Daly’s 1947 vampire novel, The Legion of the Living Dead.76 In either form of dualism the dead body, in some form, seems to be necessary in order to maintain the vampire’s
existence as it makes its way around in this world. At the same time, in both substance dualism and property dualism a distinction can be made between characteristics or properties of one’s bodily life, and characteristics or properties of one’s mental life. In other words, both substance dualists and property dualists think that there is something about the mental realm that makes it distinct from the bodily realm—again, either in substance or in property. In a moment, we will see why this distinction is important for understanding how it is that a vampire might be able to experience a certain form of pleasure and pain.

  Many vampires are portrayed as unable to experience the pleasures and pains associated with things like love, food, and drink or, like the vampire in the opening quotation, the pleasure of the wind in one’s hair or the pain of hatred. Not only do Lestat and Louis have this problem in the Anne Rice stories, but the vampires in Jeff Rice’s The Night Stalker,77 Jacques Cazotte’s The Devil in Love,78 and James Gunn’s The Immortals79 as well. The vampire Strahd bemoans his lack of feeling in I Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire,80 and even Dracula himself, the original bloodsucker, can’t seem to get any satisfaction. These portrayals should strike us as strange because the vampires usually appear to be in some state of anger, pain, or anguish when describing their state, indicating that they can, in fact, feel something . . . pain! Consider the movie Van Helsing when, during a conversation with his two female vampire minions, Dracula screams in anguish that he feels nothing, but longs to feel nonetheless.81 Or consider what George Hamilton’s vampire character says to Renfield in Love at First Bite when Renfield asks the vampire if he is happy: “Happy? How would you like to dine on nothing but a warm liquid protein diet while all around you, people are eating lamb chops, potato chips, Mallomars . . . Chivas Regal on the rocks with a twist?”82 Maybe it is just that, because they are cursed in some way or damned by a god, vampires can experience only pain and will never be able to experience pleasure as part of their continual cursedness or punishment. If the idea of vampires experiencing some form of pain seems unconvincing, there are plenty of instances where vampires seem to be experiencing pleasure while sucking blood, deceiving, wooing women (or men), or engaging in sexual intercourse.