I felt that this reading summed up very well the individual goals we in this class have been striving toward throughout the year. Teaching ourselves how to successful be with suffering, how to truly listen, and not to allow our selfish goals to could our minds and behaviors, are themes Bump has been driving into our skulls since the first day of class. However, until now, I have never seen them in action.
"The river laughed. Yes, so it was, everything came back, which had not been suffered and solved up to its end . . ." (Hesse, 119)
Although all of these aims are extremely difficult to achieve, it seems to me the one that requires the most constant, conscious effort is truly listening and sympathizing with those who are suffering. We talked a lot about this while reading How can I Help? "He sensed how his pain, his fears flowed over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from his counterpart. To show his wounds to the listener was the same as bathing it in the river." (Hesse, 120) How on earth do we reach a state at which we can mimic this kind of compassionate listening? Bump has said many times that if we had ever been listened to like this, we would know it. In all my life, I can only say that I have been listened to once with utter attention and sympathy, and it was from, of all people, a cancer patient. Stephen Whitlow, whom I have spoken about before, was a good friend of mine throughout his battle with brain cancer, when he as around age thirteen. His mother was my piano teacher, and as such we would hang out every week after my lesson. I'd always thought that it was I who was there for him, playing legos, GameCube, or as his sickness took its toll, simply laying around. Never once in my memory, did he speak about his illness or its effect on him. Instead, he asked me how school was going, how our friends there were doing, what I was going to do over the summer. And for some reason, everything would spill our of my mouth in a wave. I try doing the same for him, but was always afraid to ask too much, afraid to talk about his cancer. As if not mentioning it would make it go away. It was only after Stephen died that I realized he had been the one helping me all along. I've spent my entire life, all the hard work I've done, trying to prove to myself that I could somehow make his death worthwhile. I wanted to live up to his memory. In truth, I was angry that somehow as innocent and incredible as Stephen had died, while I had lived. It seemed unfair. I've since moved past this unhappy notion, but I will never forget him or the way he cared for everyone over himself.
From an earlier section of Siddhartha, in which his son is grieving.
I remain convinced to this day that God spoke to me through Stephen. It always seemed the only explanation for the amount of wisdom he possessed, at such a young age. "this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself, that he was the eternal itself." (Hesse, 120) He is the reason that despite my reoccurring doubts or conflicted emotions, I have remained a Christian. I have to believe Stephen's death was for a reason, and that he lives on in heaven. He's also part of the reason I love music as I do. Stephen was a brilliant musician, and knowing that toward the end of his life he lost the ability to play is extremely painful. I do not know if I will ever learn to listen with the sympathy and compassion that he always showed me. But I will try. I hope that one day I can pass on that love, and do his memory justice. I also hope that one day I can feel about Stephen's death the way Siddhartha came to feel about the loss of his son. For now, he is a fond, albeit painful memory, that will forever have left a mark on my life. (literally, see my tattoo for reference)
These poems seemed the best example I've encountered thus far of a person that experiences the mystery in his life, every day. Each of his poems captured that much sought after "joie de vivre" which we discuss in class so often. Rum takes joy in every day experiences, suggesting that it is within the ordinary, not necessarily exceptional, that fills us up spiritually. "Until you've kept your eyes and your wanting still for fifty years, you don't begin to cross over from confusion." (Rumi, Anthology, 784) This idea runs counterintuitive to the mindset most of us adopt in college. We come here to do great things, in order to learn about ourselves and the world around us. Becoming still, learning to enjoy what seems to us mundane, is very difficult, as we rush to swallow one new experience after the other. I am certainly guilty of living life in a rush. The problem here, is that once you create the habit of rushing through life, even those experiences you'd consider extraordinary are never fully appreciated.
My grandfather, Newell Kinard (I call him Paw), is not a man most people would consider extraordinary. He has lived his entire life in north Texas, graduated from Paris Junior College with a master's in agriculture, and spent the majority of his life doing manual labor. He fought in World War II, was married to the same woman for almost 60 years, and has lived in the same home since he and my grandmother were married. Yet my grandfather, despite never having travelled around the world or becoming a lawyer or physician, is the wisest, most insightful man I know. He has this ability to cut right to the heart of any problem in a few simple words, and it's astounding. He is 90 years old, and only recently began to show that he was a day over 50. He is a true testament to the idea that clean, simple living is underrated.
my sister and mom, with paw at the bottom.
As Plan II, college age kids, we tend to overcomplicate and overanalyze. As we attempt to find ourselves, we lose what we knew about ourselves before. "I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside." (Rumi, Anthology, 785) The image of banging down a door, only to find that you were inside all along, is extremely powerful for someone feeling like they've lost their way. I experienced this exact sequence of emotion this year, in my attempts to figure out my major, and seeing that it was written by Rumi centuries ago was at once a shock and relief. As Bump has pointed out, we are not the first to experience these emotions. If someone ever said to my grandfather, "I have to find myself", he'd reply, "well make sure you start where you saw you the last." (That's a direct quote, btw)
College students also seem to forget the importance of having your roots firmly placed. "Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back." (Rumi, Anthology, 780) Once again, I have a tendency to under appreciate my home and roots. In fact, many times, I have tried to hide them. I didn't necessarily want people to know how southern my family was, or how I grew up. But the south, and the southern mentality, is my home and my roots. I want to start acknowledging that. What's more, I want to begin living in joy: to recognize the beauty in the previously mundane. If I can do that, It'll make the extraordinary that much greater.
"To me, it was paradise on earth . . . I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses." (Anthology 745-746)
We all have our own, personal definitions of paradise, an imagined space and time in which we would be most happy. To some, their paradise involves a specific location, many times associated with their childhood. "And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home." (Anthology 813) We long to recapture a time in our lives when we were carefree, able to grasp intuitively the wonders of the world, free of the clouds brought on by adulthood. Our childhood remains a pristine wonder, and we spend our entire lives trying to reclaim the past. Even Jesus said that we must love God like children. "Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'" Others find paradise in their religion, believing that we suffer in life so that we might reach paradise after death. And to others still, paradise is just simplicity: freedom from the stresses and trials of everyday reality.
The garden of Eden: A Christian interpretation of Paradise
To me, all of these definitions are predicated on the idea that paradise is impossible to achieve now. This is a very Western ideal: we must suffer in the present to be happy later. Most of us in this class, until coming to UT, formed our entire lives around this concept. We worked our asses off, all relief forgone, so that we might have success in the long term. But where does it stop? It's already near impossible to break these habits now, what about after 20 years of work and stress? We allow these destructive habits to control our lives because they seem necessary for our survival or success. "If a man, boldest and most intelligent of creatures, won't wander from place to place . . . why would an animal, which is by temperament far more conservative?" (Anthology 747) The animal opinions aside, why don't we break free? We can, many of us desire to, and know that we'd be happier and healthier. But we're comfortable in our suffering. Our lives end unfinished because we never stop to realize the beauty that exists all around us, every day. Crab has talked a lot recently about stopping to appreciate the fact that we're simply breathing, alive, a part of this world. But how often do any of us do that? "most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identity . . ." (Anthology 760)
An artist's interpretation of the Buddha's flower sermon, and the origin of Zen
I think we need to stop looking for some magical future in which we'll be allowed happiness without constraints, or can reclaim the simplicity of the past. Even if you are religious, which I consider myself to be, I refuse to believe that God would have created just a beautiful world only to test us, pass or fail, for the afterlife. He must be distraught, wishing desperately that we truly see this beautiful place for what it it. We have every reason to be happy now, because we are alive, we are here. We only do this once. Fucking ONCE. So let's make it count. Seriously, fuck the rules, and fuck what anyone else thinks. Life is amazing. Paradise is right here. MAKE THE CONNECTION.
The Mystery is at once the reason for and the bane of our existence. It can be defined as many things. For some, it is the question of life after death: where do we go after we die? And to many, the answer can be found in religion. In the Christian faith, for instance, practicing individuals believe that after they die they ascend to heaven to be with God; some say this occurs immediately, others at the end of days, but the eventual result is the same. Heaven for many is a kind of paradise, free from violence and earthly constraints. "They shall not hurt and destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea . . ." (Isaiah 11:9, Anthology 709) To ancient civilizations such as the Greeks, the Mystery resided in the gods and the Underworld. Each civilization has had their own interpretation of this great mystery. But one thing is for sure: there will never be a single answer while on Earth.T
That's the point, though, isn't it? We'll never truly know, because the mystery isn't about where we go after we die, or even necessarily what we believe in. The Mystery envelops our entire existence. Who are we, and why are we here? What is our purpose? The joy is not is finding an answer, but in asking the question. "As long as we go on feeling this mystery we feel free and full and happy and we feel and act free and full and happy to others." (Anthology 730) There is great joy in acknowledging that we don't have all the answers, and are not intended to. There are things we'll never know, and that's a wonderful thing. Believing in the Mystery allows you to be inspired, and to believe in something greater than yourself, whether it is a specific religion, or simply in fighting for a cause for which you feel passionate. The Mystery allows us to go beyond what we believed we could do, to accomplish what before seemed impossible. And its the not knowing that really fuels us. "The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." (Anthology 723)
But there's a flip side to all of this. For many of us overachievers out there, knowing is about control. We want to make plans, to accurately predict and map out our future. We simply aren't comfortable with leaving a question unanswered. We realize that when we try, we lose a small piece of joy or contentment each time, but we can't help ourselves. There should not be any mystery we can't solve. "I've never seen anybody really find the answer-- they think they have, so they stop thinking." (Anthology 732) We're eventually left with an empty husk, which is filled up by the perceived expectations of others, or our professional ambitions. We put ourselves above the mystery and try to forget we have no control. How narcissistic.
In realizing this about myself, I've been trying very hard recently to reclaim the joy in life, and not be so dictated by what I want or where I want to get. I'm forcing myself to remember, as much as I can, that I am not the center of the universe. Two experiences this year have really helped me work on my self-destructive nature: this class, and my involvement with Texas 4000. I've learned the value and the joy that comes form service. the feeling of true empathy, and that relinquishing control makes life so much better. I hope I can continue along this track, and one day be an example for others of the contentment the Mystery brings.
p.s. to Professor Bump. I want to make sure you know that while we have recently in this class had issues, that I think we don't yet realize how valuable a class this has been. I will probably never have an experience like this again, and I will be extremely sad when it is over. Thank you for all you've done for us. It has changed us all for the better.
"Do to others what you would have them do to you"(Anthology 679), or the "Golden Rule", was a phrase I heard tossed around repeatedly throughout my childhood. So much, in fact, that the saying had all but lost its meaning to me by the time I was old enough to truly comprehend it. I grew up, as I've stated before, in a largely Christian community and household. Those christian values were equivalent to sum of my family's moral values, and they were all I was ever exposed to. However, around thirteen years of age I had a startling revelation, one that I'm sure many Christian kids experience at some point: Christians do not act like Jesus, or any sort of moral fashion similar to his teachings. Many Christians, in my opinion, act in a way that is precisely opposite from all of the Bible's teachings. Spouting the Bible as reference, we excuse ourselves from acting judgmental, hypocritical, selfish, and apathetic. We assuage our feelings of guilt by showing up to church or Bible study once a week, tossing some cash in the offering plate, and singing a hymn or two under our breath. We say we're not perfect, and as such write off anyone who calls out our hypocrisy, while passing judgement on others from afar.
For a long time this made me very angry. Honestly, it still does. In my opinion, the Bible lays out very clearly the expectations of moral and compassionate living, yet Christianity, almost the entirety of that group, ignores the very book we thump in reference. The largest corporations, most corrupt politicians, all claim to be full of "good Christian men and woman", as my grandfather liked to say. Yet we turn a blind eye because its advantageous. After this revelation, for a while I alienated myself from Christianity altogether. I read the Bible a lot, and took what little faith remained into my own hands. What I realized, in doing so, was that Jesus' teachings were full of love, compassion, and empathy. I gained a respect for his life that previously I'd never felt, even while claiming devotion. I wish terribly that Christians did not conduct themselves so far from their intended behavior. As such, I still do not know whether I qualify myself as one of them. What's more, one should not live compassionately just because of the threat of divine retribution, but because it is the right thing to do. In these readings, I've also realized how similar Christian teachings are to other religions. I'd always seen the connection between it, Judaism, and Islam, but I'd honestly never thought about Buddhism or Jainism. "Compassion is what makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. . . It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed." (Anthology 680) So there you have it. Compassionate, the wish to aid those less fortunate than you, altruistic life. Why are we missing this?
One area that I find Christianity lacking, however, is its treatment of animals. Even if one truly lives by that Golden Rule, Christians hardly ever extend "treating others as they wish to be treated" to animals. As such, I was floored by the actions of Jainists. "An equality of all forms of life and reverence for all of them is his central teaching. He taught, 'as you live, do so to other.' In that definition of 'others,' he embraced all living being. . . " (anthology 699) Absolutely incredible. Mahavira lived during his time in a way few Western peoples can even begin to contemplate, much less strive to emulate. We in the West should all take a leaf out of his book. Every being has life, therefore deserves to be treated with compassion. They are equal to us in every way, not matter what we have told ourselves. The torture and death of animals violates our most basic ideals: treat others as you wish to be treated. Yet people rarely extend this compassion to other species. It's not a Western ideal. To truly live a compassionate life, one must extend their empathy and love to all beings. Period. We have of course discussed this many times, but this reading has, more than almost any other, driven that point home. I feel refueled, and newly motivated.
First off, let me say that writing this blog I could barely because I watched the last episodes of How I Met your Mother and I almost physically in pain I'm so upset by that ending. So yeah. Shit. Moving On.
During the reading from Planet of the Apes, I confess it took me a few pages to realize that I was not reading from the point of view of an ape, but an intelligent man. "They were apes, every one of them, gorillas and chimpanzees. They helped our guards unload the carts." (Anthology 635) I was not the captor, but the captive. How telling is this subconscious choice to become the superior creature! I automatically assumed that I myself, through the narrator, was among the chosen few, the privileged. This says a lot about the perceived place humans inhabit within the world. For most, there is no question that our race is superior, that something separates us from animals, whether this be divine or a recognition of our ability to reason. We see everything on our own terms.
These thoughts continued with in "A Report for an Academy". Red Peter, an ape turned "civilized", recognizes that the only way to purchase his "way out" is to become as humanlike as possible. "I imitated them because I was looking for a way out, for no other reason." (Anthology 677) Honestly, Red Peter's story made me incredibly sad and angry. Maybe that's just the How I Met Your Mother talking. He recognized a flaw in all humans better than any human could: a being is only as valuable as it is human-like. Red Peter only became intelligent because he learned the way we did, walked and talked like we do. In doing so, he lost his true nature, his ape-ness. "Nowadays, of course, I can portray those ape-like feelings only in human words." (Anthology 674) Not only that, but he actually seemed to believe we were right to treat him this way. Of course, this may have been just a facade; he was just playing the game. In so doing, we become the ignorant animals, easily deceived, and he becomes our master. We strip of his true self, his heritage, his entire being, and in the end, he gives us exactly what we expected: he thanks us for it. We must learn to respect all life for what it is, and not relative to how closely it may resemble us. Maybe that's really what separates us from the animals: our unflinching belief in the lies we tell ourselves.
In relation to animal experimentation, we allow ourselves to continue due to this inherent belief in superiority. Maybe if we stopped to realize that we are one animal among many, people would see it differently. But I expect, as with Red Peter, that we will continue, at least in the immediate future, to fool ourselves into thinking we're always the intellectually and thus overall superior race, even if evidence directly to the contrary is staring us in the face.
During the reading on "White Coat Welfare", a specific passed jumped out at me. "Money is the reason that animal experimentation exists. Whose money is this? Yours." (Greek 83) Once again I am filled with such a helplessness, and an immense frustration. I've done everything I can, in light of the information this class has given me, to refrain from behavior that would not condone or ignore the animal cruelty that goes on every day. Although I felt powerless at this time to truly make a difference in alleviating these issues, I at least felt that I was doing what I could, when I could. It filled me with a small sense of hope, that maybe some day in the future things will be different. But now I'm told that "We Americans foot the bill for animal experimentation every time we buy a drug, every time we pay our insurance premiums, every time we visit a physician or a hospital or a clinic." (Greek 83) Just like when I learned about the meat industry, I realized I'd honestly never thought about it. A familiar pang of shame and anger welled up inside me. I feel as if I am being forced to accept something I don't agree with. My Insurance premiums? Health insurance is a necessity for my survival. So once again, I am directly choosing to value my life over thousands of other animals', and I can do nothing about it.
But I digress. What I really wanted to talk about, is how these readings have altered my opinion on the necessity for animal testing. Before, I would've said I thought it was a necessary evil. But the more information I'm given, the more I've come to realize that there isn't a lot of data supporting the transferability of the results procured by such means. Animal testing is a legal precedent for human testing, yet its usefulness stops there. It is a security blanket for humans, the knowledge that a lesser being has been subjected to the new drug or cosmetic so that I'll be safe. Seriously? How ludicrous is that? We are comforted by animal cruelty. I feel like no matter what I do, somehow I will be contributing to vivisection, and to cruelty and death in general.
I'm not ordinarily a conspiracy enthusiast, but it feels to me that our social norms are specifically designed to allow the continued use of these tactics. If I were to voice these views to a layperson, someone who didn't have the information I'd been given, they would think I was an extremist and immediately write off anything I had to say. And this is why until now the horrors of vivisections and animal cruelty have hidden in plain site. They're a social taboo, and anyone who voices their concern is ostracized. "Antivivisectionism became a fringe movement, appealing to an assortment of feminists, labor activists, spiritualists, and others who did not fit easily into the established order of society." (611) I've experienced this personally with vegetarianism, and I'm sure animal research opposition would be met with even more disagreement. So what are we to do? I have no idea. I'm angry, helpless, and feel more than anything like throwing my hands up. I think I'll just go live in the wilderness, grow my own food, and pretend society doesn't exist. That's all I've got.
During these readings, I was confronted with images that, for the first time since watching Earthlings, made me sick to my stomach. "Realdo Colombo, cut open a pregnant dog, removed the puppies, and then hurt them in front of the mother. Ignoring her own pain, she tried to comfort the pups." (Guerrini 46) I understand that this experiment was performed a very long time ago, and that ethics regarding animals hadn't traveled as far as it has today. But for one, many scientists didn't agree morally with the practice even then. "Few of them took literally Descarte's argument that if animals were machines, they did not feel pain as humans did." (Guerrini 45) Second, the arguments employed back then to justify animal experimentation are strikingly similar to the ones used today. "Its' necessary for the advancement of medicine, science, and thus humanity as a whole." We think that since the time of those early natural philosophers that we have elevated our state of being, eliminated the cruelty of the past. We look upon their views as at times despicable, as if we have evolved in sensibility. And yet, the experimentation has carried on, most of us purposefully ignorant, with those who aren't crying "necessity!"
This is such a tough subject for me. On the one hand, it plain and simple does seem necessary in certain cases. Emphasis on certain cases. For instance, the study of tumors in rats for cancer research. In fact, I am a part of an organization designed to raise money for research such as this, or at least for the same purposes. But studying brain trauma in apes by throwing their heads in a metal harness at literally breakneck speeds? I'm not so sure. It is necessary and beneficial that we research methods for curing the diseases that ail us. However, it seems incredibly speciesist for me to feel that animal testing in the method for doing so. Believing vivisection is necessary is by nature speciesist, as it is literally valuing your life over an animal's. When it comes down to it, though, what other choice do we have? Should we perform these experiments on willing humans instead? No one would volunteer for such procedures, and the mere mention of such human experimentation sounds despicable. So the argument goes round and round in circles. We are evolutionarily designed to value our species over others, just as they are designed to do the same. I am at a loss. All of this aside, there is no denying that a line must be drawn. In this case, the allusion to Frankenstein is particularly apt. "Victor Frankenstein built his creature of body parts from stolen corpses, but did not then assume responsibility for his creation. His neglect of and cruelty toward the creature leads eventually to his own death." (Guerrini 75) The connotation here is ominous, that if we do not find some way of halting scientific progress, eventually we will be consumed by our own creation. Furthermore, just as the monster is a foil for Frankenstein, animal testing is a self portrait of our inner selves: our capacity to inflict needless pain on others, wrought from the arrogant belief that we can, and therefore should. "The world has seen and tired of the worship of Nature, of Reason, of Humanity; for this nineteenth century has been reserved for the development of the most refined religion of all-- the worship of Self." (Carroll 544) I have no answers, only a visceral feeling that somewhere along the way, animal testing went much further than was ever necessary, and that necessity doesn't make it right. "Let it not be thought that this is an evil that we can hope to see produce the good for which we are asked to tolerate it." (Carroll 544-545) I wish vivisection didn't exist, but what's more, I wish I could believe certain people didn't enjoy it, and that one day it wouldn't come back to bite us in the ass.
A recent production of Frankenstein, in which the two lead actors (Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller) traded off the role of Frankenstein and his monster each night. Brilliant. I wish I could've seen this so badly it hurts.
So I want this blog to accomplish a couple different thing: 1) To express the opinion that Alice might seem a sadistic character within the context she is written, but that I do not think Dodgson was a sadistic human being, and 2) to make the claim that while emotional appeal is in fact the first step to political or social change, this makes scientific exploration and philosophy more, not less, important. So Without further ado.
Much of the "sadistic" behavior that Alice exhibits to me seems more a sign of the times than actual Sadism. I disagree with Greenacre's belief that "Carroll is 'devastatingly sadistic but in so veiled and hidden a form as to produce tickling sensations rather than clear awareness of attack . . . readers are charmed and comforted rather than stimulated." (Anthology 482) It simply seems like a stretch to me. Of all that we've learned of Carroll, he was an exceedingly gentle, loving creature. In fact, many make the claim that the Alice books were written as a form of release for Dodgson, an escape through fantasy from temptations of the flesh that drove Carroll mad with shame. As a result, his writing may have been inadvertently aggressive, which could explain the Duchess' actions toward the pig-baby, or Alice's mention of her cat Dinah to Mouse. He also could have been vicariously experiencing through Alice the kind of forwardness or courage he wished he could have exhibited in reality. All in all, I see the Alice books as hiding place, an escape into the fantastic for a brilliant but very unhappy man. The use of animals as playthings or objects seems more silly than sadistic, the poems more mathematically nonsensical than speciesist. Carroll may have in fact been speciesist, but as I said before, it was more an attribute of his era and culture than a lack of virtue. He was Western, Victorian, not to mention a devout Christian. As uncommon as animal rights activism is today, it was all but unheard then. I do not believe that Carroll was sadistic in the same way I don't believe all people who eat meat are nazis. The comparison may in some ways be valid, but that doesn't mean it's one-hundred-percent true.
Moving on, I do not agree that we must let go of reason in order to make a connection with other beings and begin on the road for change. It is just the first step. Frankly, art and witness and love and empathy can only get so much done. "Derrida's blow is delivered not by science but by literature, by an amazingly concise yet powerful demonstration of how the verbal imagination invites us to 'see' with our mind's eye. . . awakening in the reader the feeling of unity with all species . . . (Anthology 489) I understand completely that it is emotional, and not necessarily reason, that is the initial driving force behind political movement. It's fairly intuitive that people react more from emotion than reason. However, as I said before, this is just one step along the path to eliciting real change. You cannot take emotion to the House Floor in Congress as the sole basis for a bill proposal. You won't be listened to. So we must employ reason, and facts. And the key here is that those facts must be unemotional in order to be taken seriously. This is where science comes into play. Prove with science that animals think and feel like us, and prove with facts that the atrocities which we have reacted so strongly to actually occur. Pathos absolutely has a place in every claim. It is what initially grabs our our attention, makes us want to know. But next must come logos, the evidence and logic behind that which we want to change. (Yes, I'm using high school English here) So philosophy and science cannot be written off completely. They should not be the only two bases upon which we live, but they have a place.
I feel like these readings bring us the closest we've ever come to one of our major questions of the course, the "if we were around at the time of the Holocaust, what would we have done" question. I was floored by the statistics presented in the prison experiments. "One third of the guards were judged to have exhibited 'genuine' sadistic tendencies . . . some [prisoners] were subjected to sexual humiliation, including sodomy." (Anthology 415-417) I honestly have no idea how to take this. Is it really that easy for us to succumb to such behavior? By simply giving us the ability to do so without repercussions? We all like to think that if we were placed in a situation like this, we'd be the exception. We would each be that one person that refused to continue electrocuting the "Learner". But we all have the capacity to do horrible things. In the words of the Joker, "All it takes is a little push." If you had asked me the Holocaust question a year ago, I without pause would've told you not to be an idiot, of course I would've done something. Now of course, I'm not so sure. What's more, the situation that the so-called prison guards were placed in is comparable to that of a Nazi soldier or even German citizen in the 1940s. They were told over and over again that they were better than the Jews, that they had every right to be abusive, that they deserved. After we're told something enough, we might just start to believe it. So would I have been the Prison guard or the disapprover?
This all relates back to animal ethics. It seems to me that the prison guards abused the prisoners for the same reason we abuse animals. "Animal abuse is basically a power-and-control crime." (Anthology 427) This reminded me forcibly of Elizabeth Costello saying, "We treat them badly because we despise them; we despise them because they won't fight back." (Anthology 159) The prison guards and the children were both given the opportunity to be abusive toward something that could not retaliate. This usually happens in an attempt to take out one's own trauma, pain, or anger on a "lesser" being. You lose your respect for the living being, which can lead subsequently to a lack of respect for life in general. People that fall into this category are known as psychopaths.
So we've reached the consensus that mistreatment of animals can lead to abuse of other humans, and generally to a lack of empathy. Could not such a mistreatment of animals be extended to the animals we eat, knowing the kind of trauma they endure during their confinement and eventual slaughter? We knowingly allow millions of animals to daily be slaughtered in the most hideous of ways, and we do nothing. We don't have enough compassionate for living beings to even change our diet. In this way, we are all sadists. We are all psychopaths. Would we have done anything as an onlooker of the Holocaust? Absolutely not. Most of us would probably have joined in.
Once again, we return to the Holocaust comparison. And once again, I have no idea how to react. This is such a charged and complicated analogy. Originally, my argument was that the comparison was insulting and degrading to the cultural group it references, namely the Jewish population. However, that doesn't necessarily hold up when the man making the argument is, at least culturally speaking, a Jew. "we do to God's creatures what the Nazis did to us."(Anthology 300) Us, not them. The fact that a Singer can make this claim signifies not that the analogy compares Jews to animals, but that it compares animals to humans. Most people are made very uncomfortable by this comparison. I myself, having grown up in a conservatively religious community, was always taught that animals were beneath us. They might be cute, but they were still put on this earth for our benefit. The Bible taught us this. Within this context, to the devoutly religious person it would seem blasphemous to believe otherwise. "Man may not be more compassionate than the Almighty, the Source of all compassion." (Anthology 322) However, I would remind anyone who takes the Bibles words at face value that it was written by humans, for human benefit. People naturally would not want to condemn a practice they found necessary. So personally, I think this is complete bullshit. "I asked myself why should God, the Creator of all men and all creatures, enjoy these horrors? . . . "They too have souls, they too are God's children." (Anthology 300, 309) In this way, the holocaust comparison is no longer insulting to humans, but it does shed light on our views of animal inferiority, that we would consider a comparison of us to them insulting. Life is life, and should be respected. I personally believe that God intended this. And whether you are religious, or not, no one should blind themselves to suffering, or think themselves superior and therefore allowed. That is the true measure of this analogy: that "might is right" is a despicable sentiment.
however. my issue is not with the comparison itself, or how well it holds up to scrutiny. For all intents and purposes, the violence committed on the Jewish population during the Holocaust (arguably for all of history), and the truth of "Might is right", is the most closely related situation to the current meat industry that we have at our disposal. However, the fact remains that it is inflammatory. I agree with Bee's argument wholeheartedly: that a successful debate is created through the unemotional exchange of ideas, rather than insults (even if they're unintentional). No one wants to be told that they are a Nazi. There is no possible way to hold a coherent or productive argument after this comparison is made, because it would make anyone naturally defensive. Therefore, there has to be a better way to make others understand that animals are being tortured and that it should be stopped. In practice, I cannot honestly tell you what I think this would accomplish. I doubt everyone would stop eating meat altogether, Frankly, nor would I if I could kill the meat myself, in a more humane way (I won't go into all that). But perhaps some stricter legislation could be passed. Perhaps we could return to a more local form of subsistence. But the avenue by which this is accomplished is not through a comparison to the Holocaust. Unless a person is already receptive to the argument, it will just piss them off. I hope one day everyone experiences that "momentous intellectual breakthrough of recognizing the species barrier as morally or rationally untenable." (Anthology 316) But it's probably a long way off, and this isn't how we get there.
A few years ago, I was hanging around my living room with family over Christmas break. My sister was home from school, lounging on the couch opposite me, when she asked my dad for some milk. He looked at her, nonplussed. "How old are we, college girl? You're closer to the kitchen than I am." (All this very jokingly of course, he's the opposite of rude) To which she replied, "But I don't like to see the milk poured. It grosses me out."At first, I looked up in complete disbelief, and then burst into laughter. My dad just walked away, shaking his head at such a strange idiosyncrasy.
Looking back on this instance in light of these readings changes it completely. "We know that meat comes from an animal, but we choose not to connect the dots. And often, we eat animals and choose not to know we're even making a choice." (Anthology 380) This is precisely what my sister was exhibiting, simply on a higher level. Not only was she unconsciously denying the knowledge of where her meat was coming from, but those animals' byproducts as well. Of course I would never accuse my sister of doing this purposefully. Not only that, but I'd never thought I was doing the same thing with meat until recently.
So for the past few weeks, I've been attempting to become a vegetarian. I'm sure those of you who've gone through this before will understand when I say that it has been extremely difficult thus far. When you break a bone, you never realize how much that tiny bone was used until it hurts every time you move it, or its wrapped in a cast. The very same goes with transitioning from a largely meat-based diet. I had NO idea how much I actually ate it, and how hard it can become to find other options. I've found myself eating PB&J's in my room more and more regularity. Not only that, but it's made me feel somewhat ostracized from my friends, here and at home. I try to subtly suggest restaurants that I know have more vegetarian-friendly menus, and try to avoid talking about food as much as possible. Now, I'm somewhat afraid to go home for spring break, because I know my friends there won't understand. I've found myself making mental concessions for what I will and won't eat. "It is easier by far to conform to the carnistic majority than eschew the path of least resistance." (Anthology 388)
I realize, however, that I'll never be able to go back to eating meat as I did before: carelessly or without scruples. "Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will . . . be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society." (Anthology 403) I'm not quite at a stage where I see animals' faces in my dinner plate, but I can't just see meat either. I hope I can get used to it soon.
found this while searching "ignorance". Not completely relevant, but I thought it was funny.
So these best and worst blogs are rapidly becoming a place to vent or complain, so I'll try and keep that to a minimum. The worst of my week was feeling incredibly stressed about school an the future in general. Of Course. Again. I got a test grade back for Biology that was terrible. Granted, most everyone else's were also terrible. But this is a plan II, non-major Biology course! This should not be the class that ruins all of our GPAs. Seriously, what the hell? I would be less angry and more determined to do better if I felt like this was an isolated incident, but it seems to me like there's not a whole lot we can do to predict how well we do on those tests. I studied, knew the material well, but forgot to include a few things that she believed were key that I evidently did not. So obviously, I felt incredibly powerless and in no control of the outcome of this course. For a Plan II kid, this is a nightmare. What's more, there's also been the usual identity crises, seeing too many options and not having an answer yet for what I wanted. I feel like I've defined more where I want to go, but don't know how I get there. And I am constantly fighting between the passionate and practical aspects of my personality. The two are so dichotomous that I feel like I have to choose one side if myself just to pick a career. So these "crises" have increased in frequency and intensity as time has gone on, to the point that I'm almost constantly close to a breakdown. One thing I have realized though, is most of being unsure is simply wanting to be a part of something challenging, something that really tests my limits. And something I feel I'm good at and am valued as a part of. Which also makes me terrified that I made a mistake in choosing to drop music as a major. Should I have stayed in and done Music Business? The very thought has lately put my stomach in knots. It's a lot harder to transfer back into Butler once you've transferred out. I just miss being good at something at something, that feeling of confidence that it elicits. And I'd rather work harder and not have to decide than to specialize. Hence taking 18 hours. So basically, I'm tired, stressed, and in serious need of a break from reality. Or just some perspective.
All that being said, the best of my week actually came as a direct result of these frequent panic attacks. It all sort of came to a head last night, in the midst of a debate between Music Business and Computer Science. I realized that I had fallen back into a habit I'd gotten into in high school of obsessively fixating on anything I couldn't control, or any mistake I might have made. Right now, I'm doing everything I can, and these questions I have can't be solved by beating my head against a rock. And I'm doing it over and over, expecting a different result: insanity. I'm literally driving myself insane. So I finally said, "Dude, chill the fuck out." And suddenly, I did. Once I allowed myself not to worry, I stopped doing it so damn much. That, accompanied with actually getting enough sleep, has led me to a completely different outlook. Suddenly I realize again how lucky I am to be here and doing the things I'm doing. For crying out loud, this is a damn good school and I'm doing some badass things: Plan II, the Oxford Program, Texas 4000, even the Broccoli Project. And no one can succeed who has never known failure. So, I'm doing my best to stop killing myself, and the world has changed. I'm a better friend, son, brother, boyfriend, and I'm happier in general. It's crazy what letting go and having a little faith can do. So that's that, and I'm moving forward. Finally.
There is no doubt in my mind that poetry and literature in regard to animal rights can illicit extremely emotional responses. Literature, especially novels, require a certain investment of time and attention that is not necessarily present when watching film. That is to say, it usually requires less energy and focus than does a novel or poem. Therefore, when one takes the time to read a novel or even a poem, they tend to have gotten more from it than they would have an ordinary film. The purpose of a film, generally speaking, is to entertain. Most get nothing more from them than that. Literature, however, because of the investment involved, yields real comprehension. We are forced while reading to interact with the material and place ourselves among its subjects. When we are put into the mind of a narrator, we are usually prone to empathy. Furthermore, the affects of a novel usually have longer-lasting affects. We think about them for a long time after we've read them. There are many exceptions in film, of course, but the general movie-goer is looking for an escape from reality. As this escape is absolutely impossible when watching a film on animal rights, people will tend to ignore those, or get up and leave. Those who read animal rights literature have actively sought it out, and usually are already open to its ideas. Why else would they be reading it? So intellectually, we are engrossed in the subject and will retain more of the information.
But we aren't looking for a high retention rate here, we're trying to elicit an emotional response. Not only that, but our goal is to affect large numbers of people, as quickly as possible. It's not enough that they know the information, they have to be moved to act. In my opinion, we have no greater medium today for conveying or eliciting emotion than film. Sure, I felt a tinge of hurt while reading Disgrace, especially throughout Lurie's interaction with the young dog. "Yes, I am giving him up."It hurt to see those words, and also to realize that everything Lurie went through seemingly wasn't enough. And those words will probably stick with me for a long time. But the images I saw in Earthlings will stay burned into my memory forever, whether I want them or not. And I can't accept what I saw passively either: I am overcome by the need to act and somehow change the situation. It's the combination of images, rhetoric, and music that caused those emotions. Prior to the invention of film (as in movies), poetry and other literature were the main source for information, entertainment, and persuasion. But now, the average person reads much less than they watch t.v. or see movies. While this is obviously unfortunate, we have to know our target audience and, as that's the entirety of humanity, cater to those preferences. It's a simple truth that film as a medium is more broadly accessible to a modern audience. The uneducated man may not understand that "Hughes [is] in a line of poets who celebrate the primitive and repudiate the Western bias toward abstract thought."(Anthology 144) More than likely they would not have read Blake, Lawrence, or Hemingway, and so would have no context. But force anyone, educated or not, to watch Earthlings, and they will walk away extremely affected. In this way, the fact that reading takes a greater investment is both its advantage and disadvantage. It's much easier to not read something than to push images of hacked and sawed dolphins from your mind. So I would say that film is the first step, and literature is the next. Let multimedia be the door through which they enter the subject of animal rights, and hopefully they will move from there to poetry and literature. All too often have I done just this: seen a film that sparked an interest, and done the subsequent research. From there they can read Kafka and Rilke and Coetzee. Then they can better vocalize their emotions, with more evidence for their claims. But if we are to persuade the general public of this cause, the first step is to hit their hearts, and that will start with film.
The woman shoves me firmly through a wood and wire gate into what looks to be a fenced-in yard. I look around warily, attempting to find some context for where I was and why I was here. I’d been on my own for a long while. The bad-man had just opened the door to the fence for a second, to let his other dogs in, but that was all that I had needed. I dodged beneath his meaty legs, pelted down the alley and out of the neighborhood as fast as I could. The bad-man called angrily after me, but I ran so fast that his voice was barely more than a whisper of the wind. He may have tried to come after me, but he was too slow. I was too quick for him! Finally I was free. Free from the bad-man’s harsh words and even harsher blows. The wind blew my ears up, my tongue lolling whimsically out of my mouth. For the first time I could ever remember, I was happy. No more would I be hurt, beaten, starved or otherwise abused. And I could fend for myself. I knew I could. I had to.
It lasted this way for a few days before the pangs of hunger began to sink in. I scavenged from trashcans when I could, but anyone who caught me would shoo me away, sometimes kindly, others with exasperation. So I would try to catch an occasional rabbit or squirrel, but they were too fast, and I quickly lost interest in them. I could drink water from puddles when it rained, but I ran out of places to look for food. I became emaciated, my hair matted, nose cracked and dry. At times I almost went back to the bad-man. Almost.
One day I ran a little farther into the wild than I ever had before. I could barely do more than trot I was so hungry and tired, but I’d spotted a small rabbit and followed it as quickly as I could. Now I’d lost it, had no idea where it had gone. A pitiful whine escaped me. I finally shook and collapsed on the side of a dirt road, unable to walk any further. I was frightened, and utterly alone. My eyes began to feel heavy and droop. I was so, immeasurably tired. Maybe a quick nap, and I could find the rabbit later. Just a nap was all I needed!
I woke, panicked by the realization that I’d fallen asleep. Suddenly, I realized I was being carried. This was terrifying, and I did the best I could to protest, give some sign of a struggle. But I couldn’t; I could barely move, much less escape once again from who I was sure was the bad-man again. He was going to punish me for my escape, chain me so that I could never do so again. How had he found me?
I spent the next few days recuperating in a small house, in the corner on and beneath a blanket that smelled unmistakably of other dogs. To my utter surprise, it hadn’t been the bad-man who found me after all. It was a female, with firm but careful hands and a calming demeanor. She fed me, had washed me, and I slowly regained my strength, a sense of my former self. For a while I didn’t trust her. The only humans I’d come in contact with before had hurt me, or ignored me completely. A part of me still worried that she was fixing me up so I could go right back to my owner. She knew my name somehow: Marney. So she must have known the bad-man too. But he never came around, and slowly I began to trust and even to love the woman that had taken me in.
And now she places me in a large yard, messy and overridden with other dogs. Strays, just like me, I suppose. They came toward me in a writhing heap, dust and fur a cloud in their wake. So here it was. This was the bad-man’s punishment at last. I roll over onto my stomach, a gesture of supplication. The dogs sniff at me for a moment, a few stare a little defensively, and they all disperse. Suddenly I was just a part of the pack. I could run and play and sleep and eat whenever I wished. For the first time, I feel something akin to peace. But is this a home forever? It’s so much better than what I’ve had before, but still there is no one looking just for me. I wanted to know what it was like to be truly loved. I shake this feeling off and run to join the rest in the shade of a tree.
A few weeks later, I sit under the very same tree, and watch as a group of people I’d never seen before open the gate and ease themselves cautiously into our yard. They spend some time greeting the dogs that meet them there, but I am too content in the warmth to follow suit. One of the males, the tall one, comes over to my and squats down by my side. He scratches my ears and moves on. I like him. So when he sits down on the porch, I walk over to his side and hop into his lap. Maybe he likes me too. Maybe he’ll take me home?
I sat down on the front porch of the SARA Rescue Farm, and one of the multitudinous dogs I’d met that day: a slender, black and brown female whom I was informed was named Marney, walked cautiously over to my side. “Hi! Hi sweetie!” I said, hoping she would understand by my tone that I wasn’t here to hurt her. This fear was short lived, as she immediately came up and put her front paws in my lap. At first I was simply stunned. I had assumed all of these animals would be somewhat shy of humans, especially of tall males like myself. Yet she seemed perfectly at ease in my presence. Simply looking for someone’s attention. And with Marney, her propping up on my lap wasn’t wild or jarring and did not seem to come from an overabundance of energy. She wasn’t hopping up and down or licking my face. She just wanted to be there with me. I have a dog at home, Huck, who does this exact thing. Perhaps that’s why I was so taken with Marney. It seemed: polite. “Would you mind scratching my ears, please?” I imagined her saying. “Thank you so much.”
I sat with Marney for about twenty minutes. After three of four of those, she decided there were other pressing matters that warranted her attention, and began to walk around the porch of the small house within the fenced-in yard. She sniffed a cushion, nuzzled around for a stray bit of food, and would come back every now and again for me to give her another scratch. Never once did I hear her bark or growl at anything, but it wasn’t for fear of any of the animals. From the brief window of time I spent with her, Marney was matter-of-fact, completely at ease, and a fabulous communicator. All in all, she was one of the most immediately likeable dogs I’d ever encountered. It made me wonder how she ever could have ended up there. Was she given away? Surely not. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be rid of her. Yet here she was.
I called her over to me, and did my best to look into her eyes, looking for some sort of connection. What made this so difficult was my tendency to project what I thought she felt onto her, rather than truly taking in what I found. The image that I got from her overall was simple loneliness. She was surrounded by hundreds of other animals but had no one looking out for specifically her. Just as a human being would feel if they were alone in a crowded room. I left a melancholy sensation in the pit of my stomach. Then I tried to imagine my way into her history: what events could have led her to SARA and to the personality she developed. Interestingly enough, my dog Huck, whom she so reminded me of, was rescued from a similar situation. We rescued him from a pound when he was already about 18 months old, an age comparable to Marney’s. Is that where she was, in a pound? Or possibly Huck had been in an abusive home prior to this and his subsequent adoption, and as such so was Marney? The thought sickens me a little. Their personalities may have originated from a need to please an angry or vicious owner, to keep themselves unobtrusive and out of the way. That being said-- and going on the assumption that Huck and Marney are from similar backgrounds-- there is hope. Huck has been in my family now for about four years. Although he still is extraordinarily polite and sensitive to his owners’ feelings, he also expresses the kind of carefree joviality that one can only hope all dogs get to feel. He runs and plays energetically with our other dogs, and lets loose of round of booming barks when he sees you get out of your car. Maybe one day Marney will get to experience this same range of emotions.
But that’s just it. She and Huck may be similar, but he is in a loving home, and she is not. At this point in her life, she most likely has no idea what it’s like to be given regular and undivided attention. As fantastic as the people at SARA undoubtedly are, they simply do not have the time or resources to meet every single dog’s needs. I feel that many people must think when dropping off unwanted animals at a rescue such as this that the animal will be in a better place. While that animal may have its most basic needs met—food, water, and shelter—there is still a great need in that animal for individual affection. Not to mention that it is nearly impossible to tend to every animal’s health needs on so large a scale. A dog may get taken to the veterinarian when sick, but it would most likely take much longer to notice than if it were in a private household. Marney needs to be adopted by a loving family, and soon. She deserves that kind of affection, and in return, that family will receive one of the most amicable and sensitive dogs I will ever meet.
My experience while watching the second part of earthlings was somehow very different from the first. That first day, I was affected equally by everything that I saw, and my emotional responses were due to shock and gradual accumulation of similar feelings. In contrast, the second day I swung back and forth between two extremes. In some instances, I found myself numb, resigned, and overall less connected with the suffering I was witnessing than I’d been a couple of days before. In others, I found myself upon what seemed like the very brink of my ability to hurt and feel, which was overwhelming and almost unbearable.
The instances in which I was less connected with the suffering I was watching were during the fishing clip and in some areas during the segment on animal testing. The fishing segment, unlike what had been shown previously, attempted to make you hate commercial fishing more because of the health risks it could place you and others in than for the animals themselves. “Just remember how much irretrievable waste and contaminated sediments are dumped into our oceans.” (Anthology 209) This is obviously a legitimate argument, as was the issues brought up about overfishing, but my ability to connect with the creatures themselves were inhibited because I was worried about myself more than them. I felt selfish for thinking this way. But it’s difficult to empathize with a fish. I find it much harder to put myself into the place of a fish than I do with another mammal. Their minds and lives are so alien to our own that it seems nearly impossible to imagine life as a fish.
The emotions I experienced during the animal-testing segment were extremely stratified. One of the worst images I saw during the film was one of a Chihuahua that had undergone testing. It had stitches of some kind in its head, looked starved and neglected. But when the cameraman looked at it, the dog wagged its tail feebly, believing it was finally about to get some attention. My eyes stung and then fogged over, and I had to look down for a minute to regain my composure. I fail to see how testing on a dog would be necessary for the cure of human disease. Not only that, but much of the testing done is solely for cosmetic purposes. We are literally willing to subject another being to a life of torment so that we can look good when we go out. That is despicable. However, the breakdown with animal testing for me is that some of it might actually be necessary. Trauma experimentation on baboons? No. Infectious disease research? Possibly. I don’t know. I’d like to say there was a better way, but what is the alternative? So here I felt numb and resigned, and ashamed for not having a better answer.
The defining moment of this film for me, the one that has changed everything, occurred during the segment on the fur trade. “WE SEE A CHINESE FUR FARM WHERE AN ANIMAL IS SKINNED ALIVE. ONCE THE SKIN IS REMOVED IT LAYS IN A BLOODY HEAP; ITS EYES STILL BLINKING IN SHOCK.” (Anthology 215) The fox was skinned alive. How dare they. How fucking dare they. I couldn’t take that. It took everything I had not to jump up, to scream, to leave the room. It was beyond cruel, beyond reason and comprehension. And we are allowing this. “There is complicity.” I had to go home this weekend, and when asked by my family to explain why I’d elected not to order meat at a restaurant, the very memory of this image left me almost speechless. I couldn’t even tell my mother and sister, and when I explained this to my father, it was in barely more than a choked whisper. Because telling someone else meant acknowledging that what I’d seen had actually occurred, that it wasn’t just some horrible dream.
Knowing how little at this time I can do to change this horrific truth makes me feel more helpless and angry than I can express. But seeing these things did change my perception, rip the veil from my eyes. I can no longer ignore it, and now feel that it is my moral obligation to actively try and change this. Yes, right now there’s not a lot I can do. But I can make choices that do not condone this behavior, and I can try to tell others about what I saw. (not like the PETA people) And someday, there will be something more I can do.
