Animals, Why Should We Care?

So, back to the killing and eating animals topic.......


I was just talking about the similarities between the way we abuse our fellow humans and the way we abuse animals. I concluded that there is little or no difference between the two. I also said that we don`t get away with our assumed right to kill and eat animals because on some level we know we are doing wrong.

I can hear some of you protesting that you certainly don`t feel any guilt whatsoever !!!!! Hmmmmmmm....So what do I mean then, if people are eating meat and feeling quite comfortable with doing it?

I think that the issue is not whether any one person feels guilt or not, consciously or not, I think the point is that the guilt is buried deep inside us and that all of us carry the guilt of us all, for us all. In the same way that we all carry some guilt for the holocaust, for example, where of course we are none of us directly responsible, but because somewhere within us we know that we have all held prejudices, grudges, hatereds for people, we know that our darker impulses are part of the Nazi murder of Jews. This similitude is embedded deep within our psyche, we have all felt these feelings, maybe acted upon them, certainly we`ve watched others get bullied and done nothing. Of course, we don`t all take these urges to hurt to ultimate animal conclusions, but we often have difficulty resisting our need to hurt others.

We have discussed in other blogs how groups ask us to support them at the expense of outsiders, and often against our better judgment. They ask us to be accomplices and absolve us as reward for our loyalty. Where there is a group, such as the extreme example of the Nazis, evil is compartmentalised, and all member's defuse guilt for each other by convincing each other that their behaviour is acceptable. Where most Nazi soldiers were not guilty of murdering Jews, they were all complicit as part of the Nazi machine. Underlings may not have choices in regard to whom they hurt, but they are all part of the guilt nonetheless. A group is an organism, it supplies all needs for itself within itself and little people who don`t want to be caught up in evil when required to, invariably do so to at least some extent.

In the same way that the entire German nation was complicit, actively or passively, in the murder of Jews, all groups are capable of doing harm to others with a diminished conscience because of the dissipation of guilt within the whole. We talked about the Catholic church a while back and that even priests who are innocent of involvement in child-abuse are complicit as part of the group that has child-abuse within it. They too carry guilt for their guilty colleagues; it plays a part in their behaviour, their relationship to church goers and ultimately in religious practice and religious doctrine (I want to come back to this point in a future blog). Though we tend to separate(need to)the guilty from the not-guilty, the two are linked symbiotically as part of the same body.


Where we see in our societies higher moral values, spiritual pursuits, sensitive attunement to the more "feminine side", we see represented our capacity to turn away from the more animalistic drives that inhabit our human selves. Personally, I would tend to define a schism between our higher nature... let`s be controversial and call it our divine soul(!)... and our existential/animal selves, our animal soul. I use these terms not because I adhere to any religious values at all, but simply because this distinction has always helped me to understand the force of one of our drives against the other. The concept has also enabled me to see the game play of the divine soul versus the animal soul; how we are the servants of one, on one level, and how we have higher needs on the other. I have seen, too, how our intelligence as a species can quest us towards fulfilment in our "divine" aspect, yet also how our intelligence can be hijacked by our animal soul in order to furnish its needs.

So, given that our cruelty towards animals and people are part of the same instinct, I think that, just as our social groups carry collective guilt for all these deeds, so they do for eating animals, animal cruelty and experimentation. It is precisely that our guilt is carried and diffused by the group that we are able to abuse animals. As a higher impulse, the more sensitive amongst us will see injustice, cruelty and unfairness manifoldly in our societies and will attempt to move the rest of us to behave according to higher values, but often we don`t like to hear about our guilt and we run from it. In the end though, I am certain, inhumanity towards our fellow humans cannot cease until we stop hurting, and yes, eating, animals. The reason for this painful conclusion is that our ability to compartmentalise our guilt, hide it from ourselves as individuals, and the large-scale version of this where we dilute it by hiding it in our larger social groups, means that there is always some guilt or other creating a guilt -avoidance action. In other words, one thing enables the other.


I will be back onto this topic very sooooon........

Abuse of Animals 1: Fish

endoftheline.com/film

marinebio.org


Why should it matter that we use and abuse animals? What impact does it have on us? Will our treatment of animals, and fish too, backfire on us in the end?

It`s a tough subject with many aspects and I`ll be coming back to it in future blogs. As usual, I want to attempt to think about things with a slightly different slant, so here goes...

I have just seen a shocking documentary about worldwide over- fishing which is pushing many species of fish to the point of extinction. Fishing vessels of industrial capacity trawl for fish, catching all manner of sea creatures in their nets and when landed on deck, the unwanted species are dumped, dead, back into the sea. All of this sea life is part of the ocean`s ecosystem and plays its part in perpetuating a healthy and diverse marine environment, yet there is no concern for a practice that kills every creature as if it is merely a bi-product with no value whatsoever. The pervasive attitude is "take what you want, make your money, and don`t give a damn."

This attitude exists even though fish have been, and are being, fished to a point where it may be impossible for them to recover numbers. So why doesn`t even our greater self-interest prevail over this abuse of our seas? Why would we abuse our oceans full-knowing that we are destroying our food resources for the future? After all, we are repeatedly told that we may have difficulty feeding our growing population in times to come !!!! The answer is, of course, short term greed, but it is not just about greed, it is also about attitude, the way we regard our fellow creatures on this planet and the manner in which we fulfill our needs for food:We tend to think that it is our right to rear and slaughter animals and to catch and eat fish, that we are superior and they are there for us, that we may use them as we see fit. It is this presumption of RIGHT, in all it`s arrogance, that enables us to abuse the creatures around us with impunity.

Now, this blog is not about whether one should eat animals ....I`ll come back to that at a later date..... it is about how we treat them and why we think it okay to do whatever we wish without regard for them, their lives or, "heaven forbid", their feelings. Ah, feelings !!!!!!!!! Of course, once we compartmentalise animals as "other than like us", without feelings such as we possess, it becomes very easy to be cruel to them and to exploit them as a resource.


Within this regard for animals as being of lesser worth than us humans, I think that fish represent a special category and, really, demonstrate how we detach our sensitivities in a hierarchical way...We thought, in earlier blogs, about how we draw people into our group when we perceive them as "like ourselves" and that dolphins may be considered as honorary humans by virtue of their human characteristics, so, conversely, fish would be considered so "unlike us" that our compassion for them is on the bottom end of the scale.
Like I said in my dolphins blog, just as we discharge racism and discrimination and prejudice towards our fellow humans, so we do in respect of animals. We are so species-ist that we are (generally) committed to denying animal rights in the same way that we dug our heals in regarding the rights of black people. There is no difference.This position is, I believe, a kind of racism that can be termed here, speciesism.

A fish, commonly seen as "cold-blooded", unemotional and unintelligent, will not attract compassion and the way that blue fin tuna were barbarically impaled with giant hooks and dragged onto the ship with them, tells you everything you need to know about what happens to people or animals or fish when we perceive them as totally unlike us, without feelings or intelligence. As soon as we begin to view them as having like-qualities we can identify with them in some way,and it becomes impermissible to treat them this way.

Let`s create a global impulse to respect our planet and ALL of our creatures. We`ll get back to a discussion of animals as sentient, non-human persons a little later. I really hope you`ll join me.

endoftheline.com/film

Dolphins, Non-Human Persons.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6973994.ec


Scientists have called for dolphins to be categorised as non-human persons on account of their intelligence levels. I want to think about this and try to journey into the implications of such a status.

Certainly dolphins are very intelligent and display many human qualities, but what would it really mean if they were to have bestowed upon them such a special designation?

Let`s go straight in at the deep end, so to speak! For a start, in keeping with the honorary appellation "non-human person", killing dolphins would have to be re-termed murder. This would immediately render a previous act of killing, an act of murder and would thereby carry the guilt of a crime and possible implications for punishment.
Lets not forget that animals, being of lesser status than humans, are "killed", "slaughtered" or "culled" and the euphemism reflects their lesser standing.

So, why would the intelligence of an animal lead to the elevation of it`s comparative value? Well, we know that it is much harder to be cruel, to a person or animal, if we identify with it. Or, conversely, as we see in acts of genocide or persecution, people to be attacked are dehumanised, they become a faceless, hated or demonic enemy, and, thereby, it is immediately easier to chop them to pieces. We can example this when we consider how difficult it is to rear a sheep or pig, for example, as a pet, and then to send it to slaughter. This fact tells us that when the sheep becomes identifiable as "our sheep" and is imbued with our feelings, it becomes part of us and is then very difficult to re-categorise as food! When we have a bond with persons or animals they become "like ourselves" and as such become part of our group or clan and acquire a position of closeness deserving of protection.

The negative side of perceiving some groups as "other than like us" manifests as racism and demonisation. Where people of another race or creed are seen as outsiders, this very perception makes it easy to be abusive. In a sense, where we have seen racism against blacks, for example, being cruel to them keeps them at a distance and prevents us from seeing them as "like ourselves". So, as we have seen in witch hunts, keeping someone whom we deem to be an outsider, firmly trapped within that class, demands that we should continue being cruel to them. Cruelty helps us to justify our beliefs in the first place, but also keeps us at an emotional distance so that we cannot feel anything for the person we are abusing. If we look at the history of the abuse of black people, we can see that keeping them segregated, degrading them and maintaining their poverty, perpetuates their appearance as people who are "not like us".

When we offer compassion to others, conversely, we are drawing them in as "ones who are like us". The greater the degree of sensitivity we feel, the more humane we are likely to be towards others and the greater our sense of inclusivity. As we study dolphins and see many of our qualities in them, we want to include them as part of us..


We can see that other animals have human qualities too..and a consideration of the humanness of dolphins will naturally lead us to wonder which other animals might also be granted special privilege.( A case for apes and elephants springs to mind. ) Which animals should be deemed "humanlike" and which not? Would the distinction be based upon intelligence, however we should measure that, or upon characteristics that might denote compassion or loving?

But to ask these questions is to arrive at a juncture that spotlights the very reasons we judge or categorise each other, forming positive or negative regard for our fellow human beings. When we find ourselves trying to judge one animal over another, we display our biological tendency towards hierarchy, this time aimed at animals and not our fellows. We are caught in the glare of moral choice as the path of our considerations bifurcate ahead of us..

The consequence of our consciousness in perceiving difference, can lead to good or evil, as we choose. When we raise up one animal as special , against other animals who are not so intelligent and don`t manifest "human qualities", we are in affect, transferring our discriminatory nature onto the animal kingdom. Ultimately, just as we judge and condemn, approve and enhance, reward or demonise our fellows, we will do so with animals. Animals will be victims of racism or prejudice just as we ourselves can be. In the same way that our compassionate embrace will reach out to human beings we can feel to be like us, and our indifference and hostility will damn people whom we feel to be dissimilar, so will the same prejudicial impulse encompass the animal kingdom.

We can see how easy it is to judge, according to simplistic criteria, just who is suitable for inclusion and who is not (see my earlier blog "Compartmental Conscience") and thereby transfer these basic distinctions to a categorisation of animals. Of course, those animals who are characterised by manifest intelligence, lovingness and cuddliness, will be raised up, and those animals with disattributes, such as ugliness, non- human qualities and intelligence that we do not comprehend, may be diminished. It`s subjective. And subjectivity is a dangerous thing.

Which people will we esteem, the beautiful or the ugly? The intelligent or the stupid? I think we all know the frightening answer to this question. Dolphins display similarities to humans......and they are beautiful, smiling creatures, qualities to please us all. In the human world these attributes do very well. In our full breadth of compassion we try to marginalise discrimination against those who don`t have such favour in our eyes and I think, ultimately, we have to be mindful of this in regard to animals too.

More on animals later!!!!!!