Research Animals 2

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. 

Vivisection Part I

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. 

Alice as Sadist

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.

Sadism

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.

Singer

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.

Carnism

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.