Research Animals 3

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.


Sorry this is so short.