Vivisection

Even the word “vivisection” sounds disgusting before you take the time to dissect it for its meaning: performing medical experiments on live animals. I have to admit it wasn’t pleasant to come back from Thanksgiving, sit down at my desk and get back to thinking about these kinds of issues. I felt the warmth from the holiday melt away as I flipped to the chapter in Spiegel’s book on vivisection and looked through all the pictures. My skin crawled as I tried not to imagine what those animals must have felt.

I really dreaded looking up vivisection pictures. I found this one which is from a site advocating against vivisection...in French!

http://international-campaigns.org/

I believe that vivisection is wrong. Like JR Tolkien said (and Spiegel quoted in her book), “he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.” (Spiegel, 72) it is an inescapably tricky moral situation, however. Titus writes in his paper that “Vivisection polarized Victorian England.” (Vivisection on Campus), but I do not think that is the case today: there is a lot of grey area. It’s hard to completely throw away animal research when good can come along with it. I do, however, think that the “at least the animals are dying for a greater good” argument is wrong and maybe even insulting. These animals are not martyrs. They are suffering for reasons that they do not even understand and results which they would not sacrifice themselves for. Sure some good, sometimes happens after animal experimentation, but that is no reason to justify it. If we accepted their deaths now as unfortunate ends to an otherwise positive experiment, than it can never be changed. Since when has “acceptable” been our moral compass?

There has to be another way. I’ve tried to rationalize with myself and say that some things are unavoidable—means to an end—but I really can’t believe that. Didn’t we used to think that slavery was “just the way it was,” and that the economy was too dependent on its existence for us to be able to stop? Now we recognize slavery for the evil that it was. I feel that if proper attention is paid to these wrongs, and any evil, really, they can be systematically stopped. While Spiegel noted that “relatively few studies are significant enough,” (Spiegel, 70) some are, such as Titus’ quail experiment which could lead to “improved medication for impotence and depression” (Vivisection on Campus). It is not practical to demand that investigation be cut out completely. Again, I believe there must be another way which would not harm animal’s lives. The case of animal dissections in schools comes to mind. (First of all, I’m not sure how necessary this hands-one experience is in high school, but that’s not really my point.) I’ve heard about how there are fake frogs that students are able to dissect. They might even be reusable and so would be much less expensive for the schools over time, a practical and more moral way to teach biology! Perhaps one day, in a similar fashion, we can run digital experiments on “animals.” A more short term solution may be to make experimental records more accessible to researchers. Because many experiments are repeated around the world, it seems plausible that researchers could access some sort of experimental pool to see the effect “chemical X” has on the skin before they run experiments, saving time, money and countless animal lives.

People are already trying to stop the use of frogs for dissection.

(from Peta2's Flickr photostream)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peta2flickr/3429181248/

I’m not sure about how I feel about UT being the most confederate campus in the world (especially as it’s coming from an Aggie....just kidding!) I think this is another ambiguous moral issue. Yes, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned slaves, but that does not make them entirely bad people. And UT is obviously not putting up these statues as subversive tributes to the Confederacy and slavery! The issue is not even clear, as the disclaimer at the end of the site states: “Wikipedia and official Texas articles about Pease state that he was a supporter of the Union and do not mention his slaves at all.” (Confederate UT) This issue may be compared to vivisection. The people who supported slavery years ago were not “bad” people. They were merely ignorant or miseducated. The same may be said of animal researchers: even if I believe that what they are doing is wrong, they do not and purpose one day everyone will think that it is wrong. Titus was once an animal researcher but now believes that vivisection is wrong. If Jefferson was alive in America today, he would not demand slaves for Mount Vernon 2.0; it was not innate in him as he was just a product of his time. Similarly we may come to see that animal experimentation and vivisection is wrong.

Pets and Suggestions

The caption for this picture said, "An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language." When looking into an animal's eyes as Walker did in her short story, it is hard not to see that.

www.flickr.com/photos/ktaylorphotography/3386339076/

I thought that Alice Walker’s Am I Blue? short story was very interesting and innovative. At first I thought that Walker’s opinions weren’t in line with what we have been reading and that maybe she was only anthropomorphizing the horse, Blue. However, the transition of Blue’s eyes meant a lot to me. He went from a “horribly lonely and bored” (Walker, 316) animal to an “independen[t],”(317) “self-possess[ed],” horse, to a hating, disgusted “beast.” (318) This change all came about from his treatment as property of the humans. He was at first only bored—only bored I realize being an unfair understatement—because he didn’t have any real excitement or anyone to spend time with. Eventually humans gave him a companion, and his entire world changed for the better—that is until they unscrupulously took the horse away. It’s sad how dependent their lives were on forces completely outside their control. The Dreaded Comparison provides a similar example, that of slaves being torn away from their loved ones because masters either wished to engender hopelessness or because they believed them to be like animals who could “soon get over separation from a child or other loved one.” (Spiegel, 48) That justification is wrong on many levels. Obviously it is wrong to separate humans from those important in their lives, but it is also wrong to separate animals. All social animals feel the need for some sort of connection. It is innate in all of us. The despair and hopelessness we can feel when we are alone, animals will feel as well. It pains me to think that we can forget this because we have made animals commodities—because, like Thomas Aquinas said, “all animals are for man.” (Spiegel, 39)

We should rethink how well we interact with out pets, not just if we're feeding them appropriately but considering another basic need: companionship. Are our pets content with having us as companions or do they really need more?

http://centralillinoisproud.com/media/jpg/pets-dogs-cats.jpg

I’ve thought about this with my own pets before. I’ve always assured myself, and ignored the voices in the back of my mind, that my dog, Annie, is perfectly happy being one of “our pack.” But humans cannot be true substitutes for dogs. I wonder if Annie senses that something is missing in her life. I feel like she’s happy, but I know that she’s bored at times probably for great lengths of time during the day when nobody is home and even when we are there but just “don’t have the time” for her. We even suppress her basic instincts. As a guard dog, she barks constantly, but we also yell at her and punish her for behavior which she believes is good. How confusing that must be! The situation is worse for my guinea pig, Lady. Guinea pigs are very social animals, but we only have her. I’ve convinced myself that I can be her company, but I spend even less time with her than Annie, and she cannot even wander throughout the house as Annie can and ask for attention. I struggle over whether it’s right for me to have animals in the future, but I truly can’t resist. This is evidence of how much we need companionship. I don’t know if people will ever be able to stop having pets—and in the truest sense it shouldn’t even be wrong—but perhaps we will come to realize that we can make our relationships with animals slightly more equal or at least focus on our pet’s needs.

Suggestions

We could have a debate about the ethics of keeping pets. Are we really taking care of them or are they just toys?

While I think a debate would be interesting, I also thought it would be beneficial to make real contributions to animal rights legislature. I searched the internet and found a great site in no time at all. I'm sure there are many more sites that would teach us how we may contribute as well.

We could send these electronic (and easy to fill out) letters to support the following bills:
(All found on the Humane Society’s website)
· Great Ape Protection Act which would phase out the 500 federally owned chimpanzees used for research.
o https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=4242
· Horse Transportation Safety Act which would improve interstate transport of horses.
o https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1926
· Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act which concerns horses being used for human consumption.
o https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2248
· Wild Horses and Burros Act which would end the killing of wild horses and burros for consumption.
o https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=728
· Shark Conservation Act of 2009 would close a loophole which allows sharks to be finned. (Have their fins cut off and thrown back into the water.)
o https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1742
· Sportsmanship in Hunting Act would improve hunting conditions including cracking down on captive hunts.
o https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2032
· Captive Primate Safety Act (already passed in the House!) would work against primates in the pet trade.
o https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1986

Here’s a page for more Humane Society Action alerts: http://www.hsus.org/legislation_laws/action_alerts/
You can go to this page to see how to support various actions for different organizations. There is also a list for different actions in states, so we can check to see if Texas ever has anything we can do.

Also, I’m not sure if any of you have heard of this website before, but it was pretty popular at my high school for a while. You can click a button, and it donates 0.6 bowls of food to an animal shelter. You can sign up for an e-mail reminder and do it once a day—not a big deal! It also has similar tabs which support charities involving hunger, breast cancer, child health, literacy and the rainforest.
http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/

It also has a site which lists petitions you can sign which support various animal issues. http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/takeaction.faces?siteId=3&link=ctg_ars_takeaction_from_thankyou_leftnav

So all I’m saying is that maybe we could periodically spend fifteen minutes in class signing petitions or sending electronic letters to our representatives. Or maybe even for just one day. Anything would help make some positive difference.

Here's a video which gives a case for an Animal Bill of Rights.

Speciesism, Peer Pressure etc

href="file:///C:%5CWINDOWS%5CTEMP%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml">

People didn't always see animals as mere commodities. They were food, but they were also more.

store01.prostores.com

I was very interested by Michel de Montaigne’s essay, “An Apology of Raymond Sebond.” I suppose it’s because the thoughts he expressed, against speciesism, seemed so modern to me yet they were written in 1576, over four hundred years ago! I thought, ignorantly I now realize, that people had only recently begun to recognize and think about speciesism and that our subjugation of animals was an unfortunate and extreme response to our biological motive to kill and eat—something that we were hopefully evolving to overcome. As the essay “Why Look at Animals?” notes, animals did not first appear to us as purely meat: they, “first entered the imagination as messengers and promises.” (Anthology, 409) They held a sort of dualism, “each lion was Lion, each ox was Ox,” yet we also ate them. (Anthology, 410) “They were subjected and worshipped, bred and sacrificed.” (Anthology, 410) In a response to the growing demand for animal products, I suppose, we have begun to forget our early beliefs and see animals as commodities. We are not evolving from a certain mindset as I once thought, but are embracing it more than ever. We are forced to live apart from animals in order to eat them and maltreat them so we may kill them—so the guilt doesn’t get in the way. That is why we must begin to appreciate the animal’s worth more than ever. It does not work to think that we could merely let them be. After all, what sort of world have we left for them? We must reconcile the relationship we have broken with them, to remember that although they are not one of “us,” we are one of them. As Margaret Mead said, “One of the most dangerous things than can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it.” (Anthology, 381) This creates mindsets which allow violence to happen because it is not true violence or a true wrong at all. When animals are subject to mistreatment—as living beings—so are all living beings. Humans obviously have a natural inclination to desire superiority: we have subjugated women, races, religions, animals and split societies into all sorts of classes and categories. One by one these categories have been proven unjust. How long will it take to break down the barrier between animal and man? “Presumption is our natural and original disease.” (Anthology, 386) Although it is all too easy for some to presume that cruelty to animals is alright, perhaps out of convenience, I presume—and I do it with faith—that this presumption is unjust.

If we treat animals better, how much easier will it be to treat humans equally, too.

spiritualityhealth.com

Another section from the reading struck me, Emile Zola’s quote that, “the fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous.” (Anthology, 381) I have always held myself back to a certain extent whenever I talk about animals. I’ve even done it in class. I just didn’t want to come off as too strong and embarrassingly, to “appear ridiculous.” I wonder how many of us truly want to help animals but don’t want to appear ridiculous, like citizens outside concentration camps who didn’t want to risk knowing what was going on. I realize now that my attempt at self preservation does not benefit anybody, especially myself. The treatment of ethics should not be stunted by reservations. I wish to say my beliefs with conviction: I believe that the common conception of animals is wrong. Even writing this down on a computer I feel a little stupid. It seems like such an unsupported and naïve statement to make, but I believe it nonetheless. I used to think that, although factory farms were terrible, they were not everything, but unfortunately they practically are. “Over 99 percent of US chickens spend their lives in crowded confinement.” (Anthology, 389) I feel like this statement surpasses the limits of our language because we are not able to emphasize the magnitude of that figure enough. Could you honestly look all of those animals in the face and not “have trouble, yes, a bad time overcoming [your] embarrassment? (Anthology, 396) Would you be able to call them “just animals” to their faces and ignore their suffering? The unfortunate answer is that this is what we do every day. We are faced with animal suffering, and we choose to ignore it. We are wrong. I used to think that changing my own behavior wouldn’t really do anything, but isn’t that what every conscious, concerned yet uninvolved person is saying? To say that you don’t want to try, to stop wearing leather or eating unethically produced meat, because it “won’t make a difference” is just like saying that you don’t care whether change occurs or not. They both have the same ends. How else can our treatment of animals improve unless we all strive to make a conscious change?

Change ultimately starts with the individual.

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9G_bF57IQNLNdAAKIyjzbkF/SIG=12c1h33bv/EXP=1258582779/**http%3A//www.flickr.com/photos/artmakesmesmile/1464472181/

The final point that I wish to address comes from a four word phrase: “all men [are] Nazis.” (Anthology, 377) I agree that people are capable of extreme violence and destruction and that we all “have it in us” for lack of a better word. But I do not believe that this is a helpful conclusion. Yes, people will inflict pain on others, as they did in the Millgram experiment. Some feel, "enthusiasm for inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others. "(Course website) What this should tell us is to be aware of the dangers of violence and sadism, not that we all have it in us, waiting for a moment to come out. Why not say that all men are compassionate, loving or good? If we are capable of abject evil, we all have the potential for good. I do not think it is beneficial to dwell on the negatives. As I have said before, that engenders hopelessness and maybe even a tendency to accept that that is “just the way it is.” Wouldn’t it be better for goodness, and not evil, to be the standard by which we measure ourselves? I do not think change can happen unless we realize that it can and that we all have it in our power to accept it, willingly.

This guy kind of goes on and on, but he is urging others to be kind. I think it is better to emphasize this than negativity.

Coetzee 2

“She is writing to herself, that is whoever is with her in the room when she is the only one there.” (Coetzee, 145) Sure this refers to Elizabeth Costello, but right now I am going to take over and adopt this phrase for my own purposes. I am writing to myself. But to myself, really? Who is it that’s with me when I’m the only one here? Who do I want to listen? I think we all need to ask ourselves this question. Not only in cases of animal rights or questions of humanity but in anything that we question. Those words and ideas that we “send out … into the darkness and listen for what kind of sound comes back.” (Coetzee, 219) These words must be contemplated, and further than that our ideas must be shared. What use is a thought that ends at its source, the thoughts of Paul West kept to himself, as Elizabeth Costello suggests? Those ideas can end, as plaques commemorating the dead, a “list of the dead and their dates.” (Coetzee, 173) Our ideas can translate into action but only if we consider the ‘other people in the room,’ those who are going to be impacted by them, or act on them—even if it is just ourselves.

When you're writing or thinking, who is it for?

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9G_bHN.UwBLgREA1BmjzbkF/SIG=129iglrb6/EXP=1258398974/**http%3A//www.flickr.com/photos/22576286@N07/2210852611/

Now to send out some words into the darkness.

Vegetarianism.
A pause. “Sorry, what was that? I was thinking about meat.” A lingering and embarrassed sense of resentment slinks forward. I’m not sure of everything that comes back after that word, but I know “goodness” comes along with it. This word tells me to try.

I'm not even quite sure what's going on in this picture. I guess humanity's a complicated thing.

www.voicesforum.org.uk/humanity.jpg

Humanity
At first a rush of images, ironically unaccompanied by words. Of statues and equations, flickering senses of emotion and family. And something that wasn’t there—or wasn’t as present until recently—something much more sinister. I try to throw out that answer and get another. There is nothing as I try to sort out what I want to echo back. I am rationalizing. Appropriately. The images come back, just as blurred and indiscernible as before. I’m not sure what that word, “humanity” means to me either, anymore.

Many people probably think of cute animals when they think of the word "animal." But the definition should bring back more.

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9G_bDv4UgBLo3ABql.jzbkF/SIG=127ioqv3b/EXP=1258398840/**http%3A//www.flickr.com/photos/duckien986/2273808277/

Animals
In light of what we’ve recently seen I think of Earthlings. The pictures I used to get of nature, a collection of beautiful and varying animals straight out of a children’s book, are gone. Or at least are covered by the images of Earthlings, shouting at me to listen. Reminding me again and again. The real question is how does this and the previous word, “humanity,” fit together? It’s easy—well, definitely not easy but easier—to see the connection from a human experience. We might not really understand the difference between animals and humans, but we have an idea. But how do animals see us? A phrase from Kafka’s, “A Report for an Academy,” struck me: “as if there were only one man.” (Anthology, 368) When Red Peter, the chimpanzee, was trapped in the cage he initially could not differentiate between the humans he saw. To him, we were the “same faces, the same movements.” (Anthology, 368) To animals that we do not have a deeper connection with, humans are all the same. A squirrel may like all of us because one person fed him some food at a park, but a stray dog may be afraid of every human because only one kicked him on the street. This phrase made me ask myself, and all the other people in the room as I’m writing—everyone, really—would you be proud if you were that one man? Are you treating animals the way they should be treated? Some people may say, “Who cares what animals think of us? Why does that even matter at all?” They are clearly missing the point. Animals are living and conscious beings which deserve just as much respect as anyone else. In my opinion, animals are not “biological automata,” like Descartes believed (Coetzee, 92), and if they are, we are as well. They are not objects, but others. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Think, selfishly, of the retaliating elephant in Earthlings. That is the anger and resentment some animals hold as captives, and it can be held against all humans: we are all one, after all. Can that honestly rest peacefully in your consciousness?

We should always be kind to animals.

www.flickr.com/photos/35611080@N05/3477912409/

Coetzee

I really liked what I read of Elizabeth Costello so far. I can tell because I enjoyed it just as much after I had to get up off the grass in the center of the Quad and go back to my room. That seems to be the interest barometer nowadays. Coetzee’s innovative writing style intrigued me, and I initially read the book as a story. What he is most successful with, however, was presenting Elizabeth’s lectures—which were originally his own (Anthology, 338)—as just hers. Let me explain a little further. Coetzee presents the lectures in a two-sided way. Elizabeth is giving them, but others are commenting and making judgments. We are not immediately asked to support her arguments, as if Coetzee had presented them to us in an anthology or a set of “collected works on animal rights.” When a lecture is being presented in this way, almost forcibly, and you choose not to agree with it, you will tend to disagree with everything being said, almost on principle. You tend to “like” or “dislike” the speaker or author and make blanket judgments. When an opinion is expressed as it was in Elizabeth Costello, with the ability to accept or not accept readily, you can choose what it is you really want to agree with, without feeling any real allegiance to the one speaking. This is Coetzee’s major triumph. I may not agree with everything Elizabeth says, but I can choose what I do agree with. And I feel stronger doing so. I am not succumbing to a mindset which is being thrust upon me. The resulting opinions which I choose to agree with are made mine by that express volition. I can choose to react as Norma did, too, and “snort” at Elizabeth’s comments (Coetzee, 77). For the most part, however, I chose not to.

During lectures we might feel like we cannot question what is being presented to us. Elizabeth Costello was not like that.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teddy-rised/2814710002/

I will try not to be redundant in the following paragraphs. I feel like a lot of my writing has made me a broken record of “animal’s worth,” “respect,” “equality,” and “humanness.” I will try to come about my thoughts in a different way.

One way I do not think I can do that yet is through the Holocaust, which “many people say,” “is the event beyond analogy.” (Anthology, 342). I have not learned enough or thought enough to debate how fair that argument is. I think the comparisons are valid and effective—and sickeningly resonate—BUT… And I can’t quite qualify what the BUT is. My mom had a great uncle who was liberated from Dachau. A priest. To her, this argument would probably be too personal as it is for many—probably even for me although I’m not positive. The simplest reason for the uneasiness cultivated by this argument is biological: we protect our own. This goes along with what I’ve been saying earlier. We are most important to us—that is perfectly natural. That is why we have difficulty with this analogy. Shouldn’t it be that people’s deaths are more traumatic than other beings? To many this analogy seems like profanity. The question in my mind then, isn’t about superiority, but relativity. Any superiority we feel can realistically only be relative. We do not have the authority—ignoring the question of religion—to make our superiority an absolute truth. I’ll have to leave the question of the Holocaust analogy at that for now. I think if I thought more about it I could come to a more complete conclusion.

Many people aren't sure that comparisons can't be made to the Holocaust. I think it's fair to say that an Animal holocaust is occurring, however.

http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/photos_videos/holacausto.jpg

There was one thing I more definitively disagreed with. (Although I’m still not one hundred percent—nothing’s definite anymore, in college!) Elizabeth’s treatment of “bat being” and “human being.” Coetzee is arguing that it is possible to place ourselves completely in another’s beings—just as John testifies that Elizabeth could place herself in her character’s. I don’t think it is ever possible, however to place ourselves into the bat’s being. Elizabeth uses the analogy of death. (Coetzee, 77) We can place ourselves into the corpse’s “being”—if we can even call it that—so we must be able to place ourselves in the bat’s existence. I will ignore the problem of whether we can truly understand death to focus on another. Death is one state that we will experience one day, inescapably, but we cannot ever understand what it is to be a bat because we will never be bats. The states, of human condition and the other’s, are not parallel. I think that, ironically, Elizabeth’s reasoning is anthropocentric: “I can feel what a bat feels, so therefore they are worthy.” We should not need to completely understand other animals to respect them. We should simply accept them as other life forms. We have made our measure of worth reason. That is not to say that other forms of worth are not equally important to other species. In an alternate universe, couldn’t Max the dog look down on Naomi in Peter Singer’s short story because he has a “better sense of smell than [her]?” (Anthology, 346) Once again, we are not absolute judges. This seems to be the polemical issue when concerning animal’s worth, which all arguments stem from. Are we the best? I answer: what does that mean? How can Naomi’s father asserts that “there is more to human existence than there is to bat existence” (Anthology, 347)? I wonder where he got this evidence. What is this “more?” I believe it can only be defined in human terms and therefore is not a transitive “betterness.” We may think we are the best, but we are the only ones with that viewpoint. What a pathetic sort of superiority that is, a bully asserting his power on the playground when no one else is even listening.

How could we ever say we know what a bat is like? Why do we care in the first place?

http://batcontrolexperts.net/images/scary-bat.jpg

So, ultimately, I agree with Elizabeth’s big idea, as weak a statement that is to make. I don’t think I need to go through her points one by one and check them off. You will get the idea. I want to end by going back to Norma’s snorting and sighing, something which strangely struck me as profound. I believe Norma, in a pun perhaps Coetzee intended, represents the “norm” of society. The opinions most people hold in regard to animals, a sort of passivity and a “why should I care?” During one of Elizabeth’s lectures Norma sighs, a negative response to Elizabeth’s arguments, so that only John can hear. She is subtly trying to impress her opinions upon his. We are given the sense that that generally works and that it is not very difficult. How easy is that? How easy it is for the norm to be maintained. People who wish to combat animal cruelty or promote vegetarianism have to constantly face the Norma’s of the world—the Norm. They cannot sigh in the audience and incite change. They must get in people’s faces, yell, or make shocking and loaded statements as Elizabeth does. Change is difficult and people are hesitant to accept it, especially if they just don’t want to. When, as John tells his mother, many people “don’t want a vegetarian diet” and trying to help is a “waste of time” “when they won’t help themselves.” (Coetzee, 104) John continues to show the appeal of normalcy by humoring his wife and saying, “a few hours and [Elizabeth will] be gone, then we can return to normal.” (Coetzee, 114) As much as Elizabeth tries to make an impact, she even has difficulty persuading her own son. Normalcy is just that. It is normal. It is entirely pervasive, and it will be very difficult to overcome. But not impossible. Slavery in America was once the norm. The horrors of the Holocaust, if they weren’t the norm, at least became standard and happened daily. But as these norms changed and were eradicated so can the horrors of animal cruelty.

Activism is one way to combat the norm.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/activestills/1413460045/

Much longer than I thought it would be...

This DB's going to be a little shorter. I just don’t want to think about Earthlings much longer—even though I know that I will, and as much as I can try to get the images out of my head I won’t. And ultimately it’s good that I don’t.

I think this section of Earthlings was even harder for me to take because I felt that there was not enough—or really anything that I could immediately do. I could respond to the section about food production and become vegetarian—to appease my guilt. I am hungry all the time and haven’t really figured out how to do it right. But it’s at least some way I could react, even if it didn’t really do much. After the second half, I am once again hopeless and lost. It showed once again the biggest problem we are truly facing—human mindsets. How can we combat people’s perceptions and the views we’ve held for millennia, essentially that animals are our objects and nothing more?

Earthling’s message really resonated with my viewpoint that what really needs to change are people’s thinking processes. You can’t tell the people who run factory farms that what they’re doing in wrong. They’ve heard it before; what they are dealing with is the “product.” They are either desensitized or never truly thought about animal rights in the first place. We need to promote understanding and combat what Earthling’s highlighted as a major problem—ignorance. It is all too easy—ignorance is bliss—to forget about what we’re doing to animals or to redefine it in a way that hides the truth of animal cruelty even from the perpetrators. We must face animal cruelty and be conscious of it. Do everything we can to stop it. The scary question is HOW?
I cried the most during the retaliation segment. Because the hopelessness of the situation seemed so apparent. Animals obviously do not want to be abused and mistreated. During the movie I imagined myself walking up to those elephant trainers, slapping them and yelling at them for what they’re doing. I wanted to be put in that situation. But my thoughts continued, and the trainers responded by becoming angry and hitting me with the same sticks they beat the elephants with. I was scared. While my thoughts were, admittedly, a bit disturbing, I think they reveal a major problem: violence engenders violence. The people who mistreat animals will not willingly admit that what they are doing is wrong. They may even respond aggressively if people implore them to change their actions. For the time being, the animals they hold in captivity really have no hope. The rampant elephant shown during the retaliation segment was finally taking a stand against her captors—in a sense I actually saw her as a hero. What hurt me so much is that she really had no chance, and there was nothing else she could have done. There was no escape. The last moments of her life were spent in panic and pain, a mad dash for escape amidst screams, gunshots and hatred. The last words she heard were screamed: “you fucking animal!” I’m getting teary even thinking of it now. Where is the escape? It can never truly end until the captors realize their captive’s worth and the harm they’ve inflicted on them. How long will it take for them to see their crimes—if at all?

These animals would escape if they could.

www.flickr.com/photos/farmsanctuary1/2162610423/

As much as I agree with Earthling’s message, there is once issue which I believe was not treated appropriately. Let me give you one guess. It is their treatment of zoos. I cannot deny that there are bad zoos. Those are unequivocally wrong. But working at a great zoo myself and understanding their true message and purpose, I cannot accept Earthling’s claims universally. Earthlings argues that a zoo’s purported message of conservation cannot be made when the animals are not wild, are taken out of their element and are treated as mere objects. This is an inadequately supported and highly one-sided claim. The Houston Zoo has a strong focus on conservation. It uses many of the funds it raises, as a non-profit organization, to both support conservation organizations and send zookeepers and other staff members to work on wildlife conservation projects abroad. The zoo even has programs of its own—they have developed a highly successful prairie chicken breeding program offsite which is bringing this native Texan species back from the brink of extinction.

This is a banner from the Australia Zoo's conservation website.

http://www.australiazoo.com.au/conservation/images/banner-conservation.jpg

The zoo’s policy is that people will not be prompted to support conservation causes unless they are faced with the issues or can have a positive interaction with the animal itself. Isn’t that even the idea behind Earthlings itself—prompting action with images and “first-hand” exposure? I worked in the Education department for two summers, and I can testify to this fact. You would not believe how much some people don't know about animals and how much they were later interested when we were able to talk to them. Handling animals, I was able to tell people when they weren’t touching the animals gently enough and reinforce—in a very small way—a sense of the respect needed for animals. Working with the “scary” or “gross” animals such as snakes or hissing cockroaches helped prove that these were not animals to be afraid of, that they were actually fascinating and even sweet. I even changed my own mind after handling the cockroaches! Little changes like this occur in zoos daily. They may not seem like much, but they are a step in the right direction.

The zookeepers at the Houston Zoo are also very concerned with the lives of their animals—after all, they are not paid very much! They do this job because they love animals and want to take care of them. This does not mean that the animals are treated as pets, anthropomorphized and babied. While the animals are treated kindly and relationships are formed between the keepers and animals, they are understood as wild animals first. (I would recommend Life of Pi to read about how some animals are very comfortable in zoos and being taken care of.) They are given enrichment daily to complement their natural instinct and diets carefully formed by the Commissary based on nutritional requirements.


This is actually one of the girls I worked with and where I worked! Natural Encounters has an emphasis on Education so that's why some of the animals are being trained.

In addition, many of the animals I worked with were rescued—taken from airport and border confiscations, private collections or shelters which did not have adequate space or resources. Fiyera, the tamandua—a species of anteater, who I worked with was sold into the pet trade after her mother was illegally poached in South America. She was fed an inadequate diet and now requires constant medical attention. Where else could she have gone? Animal shelters and rescue programs are wonderful, but they are also very difficult and costly to maintain. Zoos help rehabilitate animals and give them new lives. They bring endangered animals back in greater numbers and release many animals into the wild. They are not simply hoarding “exotic” specimens for our enjoyment. I think it was wrong for Earthlings to discredit all zoos and not even with very much evidence.

Yes it is true that some zoos are inadequate—anything may be perverted—and that there are some people go to zoos that have less-than-respectful understandings of animals. These are problems which may be handled. Just think about how far zoos have come in the last hundred or even fifty years, and education programs help combat people’s ignorance and foster an appreciation for animal life.

Wow. To quote myself, I think I lied when I said “this DB’s going to be a little shorter.” I guess I had a lot to say. This shows how important dialogue is. I was talking to the same boy yesterday that I had an argument about speciesism with earlier. The topic of speciesism essentially had come up in class—a discussion about eighteenth-century British literature no less!—I was sort of awkwardly put on the spot, and we all continued talking about it after class. I loved that I got to share my opinions. They all asked me questions and started talking about it amongst themselves on our way back to the Quad, and I think that’s what’s most important—getting people to at least think about animals. He asked me, “so what are these similarities between animals and people?” and I said, “The similarities don’t really matter too much. It’s that we all have a simple, common purpose.” He responded by saying that we’re still “better,” and when I asked him what “better” meant and why that even mattered he said, “Let’s just say I’m not trapped in a cage right now.” I said, “is that really even something to be proud of?” We ended up going different ways then, but I’d like to think that maybe I changed his mind a little bit. I don’t meant to promote myself with this example, but it’s just one way I see this issue playing itself out in my life. I hope I get to share my ideas in the future and change people’s thinking at least a tiny bit. Any positive change is progress, no matter how small. Maybe the situation isn’t as hopeless as I thought it was.

We need to talk about these issues.

http://www.nagy-arts.com/Mosaics/07/dialoge.jpg

Earthlings 1

I feel stupid sitting at this computer trying to write. What could I possibly say? My reactions feel like nothing in the face of what we were exposed to today: animal cruelty. I know that we all felt the same on some level. I saw us trying to catch each other’s eyes as we glanced around the room. I did it too—wanting to know everyone’s reaction and needing to know if they saw what I was seeing. I’m not sure I can even trust my own eyes.

I knew this wasn't how most cows lived, but I never really thought about it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryan_paul_brooks/520781606/

Especially because I’m not really sure how much of the documentary I actually saw. When the man held up a pistol to the pig’s heads, for example, I knew what was coming. And I definitely knew that I didn’t want to see. I would look down each time in disbelief, maybe scribble down some words which didn’t truly mean anything—anything to get away. Ear clipping in bright pink ink. In disbelief, I didn’t shake my head; instead my head shook—involuntarily—as if it were trying to shock me out of the moment and remind me that I was only sitting in Parlin 104. I wasn’t right there. I wasn’t in the slaughterhouse. But in a way, that distance frightens me even more. Where are all these atrocities occurring? How many animals were murdered—how many more suffered—while I was writing this discussion board? This paragraph? This sentence? The idea this video presented of the violence, cruelty and neglect out there was just too much to handle.

I’d heard of the suffering of animals before. I think we all have to a certain extent. Today I saw those words transformed to images. But what struck me the most—and maybe even horrified me the most—was watching the people involved. They threw gassed cats into a trash can, a live dog into a trash compactor, slit animals’ throats, shot them and enjoyed it. Who are these people? We can try to disown them—and I wanted to—but we are those people. I have the capability to act just like they did. I’m going to take the optimistic route and say that the mindset which engenders animal cruelty is a coping mechanism because I cannot stand the idea that humans would derive a pure and innate joy from harming others. I think animal cruelty has evolved from a gross representation of our needs, the need to eat, for example. I do not have a problem with people eating meat, and I think we have devalued animals’ worth in order to cope with murdering them. In order to deal with billions of mouths to feed, we have been forced to expedite the process and devalue animals even further. As empathetic beings, we cannot handle the implications of ruining billions of lives. We might, as the men did in the videos, even come to feel that you enjoy it. There’s no other way it could be done. It’s interesting and terrible how “far” we have come.

McDonald's CEO might just think of the "product" and not the animal's lives involved.

news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/091027/480/13c59444e...932ff3a5f

I think our class is determined to try. Alice, Maysie, Molly and I went out to Veggie Heaven today. We wanted to try vegetarianism for a while. That’s something at least—not much, but something. When I looked over the menu, I saw how much more varied it was than I thought it would be, how much tastier it looked—even how much cheaper it was than I expected. I want to keep this going. I need to, really. I can’t forget.

Vegetarian Fast Food Options

Empathy

I never realized it before, but I have always thought of compassion, empathy and sympathy from one perspective—that of the person feeling it for others. Perhaps that reflects a selfish desire on my part, that by being compassionate, for example, I am in part being granted the dignity of “tak[ing] pity” (Anthology, 274K) on others and all the other positive connotations of these words. While I would honestly want to help people in pain or in trouble—to feel for them and attempt to understand their situation—I would never think about what my feelings could do for them. Dick presented a different definition to me. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, he showed that compassion, sympathy and empathy aren’t just nice, but necessary.

What is compassion?

http://www.selfhelpzone.com/category/self-confidence/

This idea came most clearly to me when Rick Deckard began to climb the Mercerian hill alone. He is struck by the first rock and, “the pain, the first knowledge of absolute isolation and suffering, touched him throughout…” (Dick, 231) He begins to panic and thinks, “I have to get out of here, down off this hill!” (231) Jumping into his car, he tries to decide why this moment was different like any other empathy box situation and comes to the conclusion that this time was different, “…because, he thought, I did it alone.” (231) Rick needed other’s support to get through the pain, a feeling that could cause “absolute isolation.” Our pain is only ours to feel; it is highly and completely individualized. But the knowledge that others are there for us or are feeling pain then too or are happy can make a world of difference. Humans are social creatures, and the feeling that you are the only person who is going through something, especially if it is painful, is a highly discomforting situation. Empathy dissolves this feeling. Rick would have felt more secure had he been in a normal empathy box scenario, where he could feel others presence if anything. He felt that he could not even make it alone. Iran stressed the importance of spreading good feelings by urging Rick to share his happiness after he purchased the goat, saying “I want you to transmit the mood you’re in now to everyone else; you owe it to them. It would be immoral to keep it for ourselves.” (173) In this sense, compassion and empathy aren’t just feeling others’ pain but “desir[ing] to relieve it”(274J). Sometimes when we feel sorry for someone that is all we do. We fail to attempt to fix the situation in any way. Dick shows that reminding troubled people of goodness is highly beneficial to helping them overcome their difficulties—to show them ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’ To use a less-than-serious example, this is like when you were a kid and were crying and someone tried to make you laugh. And you hated it because for some reason you just wanted to be sad. But eventually you caved in, almost begrudgingly, and started laughing and instantly crying seemed so stupid. The power of happiness and good will is not to be left unnoticed.

People need to feel like they are not the only one.

This incidence brought up another question: what is it about the empathy box? When I first read about it in the book, I thought it was a brilliant idea, but upon closer thought I decided that it only served to underline serious problems in Dick’s world. We should never need a machine to feel other people’s feelings; the people of 2021 are just so far removed from others that they have a very difficult time. The empathy box is empathy in abstraction, "withdrawn or separated from matter," (Website) from empathy itself. Is this a sign that people were losing their sense of empathy and were forced to artificially create it in order to feel more connected? And a more serious question came up, could humans ever lose empathy? What would that take?




In a more unrelated note, I thought that Dick’s solution to the ethical problem of killing androids was very interesting: it’s wrong, but it’s necessary. Deckard reflects toward the end of the book, “As Mercer said, I am required to do wrong. Everything I’ve done has been wrong from the start.” (226) The fact that Mercer, the quasi-religious figure of the book, imparts this solution is especially conflicting. He is the figurehead of empathy in the book, the voice of compassion, yet he tells Deckard that what he does is necessary even though it is wrong. It follows that androids must have a presence and some rights of their own; otherwise it’s just dealing with a broken machine. I can understand Dick’s viewpoint, that some “wrongs” are unavoidable and even essential, but it would take a lot for me to agree. Perhaps I’m too idealistic, but it seems like there can always be an alternative. If it’s wrong, shouldn’t attempts me made to prevent it? Dangerous androids could be captured and placed somewhere else, away from the people, for example. The androids can obviously think on their own and try at all costs to preserve their cognition, to not be retired.

What rights do the androids have?

http://www.3d-box.de/sr_szene09.asp

In ethical issues such as this, I don’t care about costs or convenience. I believe, to use a cheesy reference, that MasterCard is right. Certain things are priceless—life being one of them. We do not have the right to take away anyone else’s life, even, as in the case of the androids, if we are not certain they ever had that right at all. I believe this case may be directly compared to the rights of prisoners and criminals. Some people believe that by committing a crime, they have forfeited their right to lives as a danger to others. I do not believe this is true. Who are we to determine the worth of others? Dick’s analogy through the role of bounty hunters and androids was interesting but ultimately came to a conclusion different than my own.