Animal Rights Reply
[a reply to a post at talk.politics.animals]
kelly.cowan@ebbs.cts.com wrote:
>
> capability to put all other on a scale, relegated to what they can do for
> us. We simply seperate as a way to solidify our human heirarchy.
You mean humans and their billions aren’t naturally at the top?
> Animals do have a sense of “I.” They live for themselves. My cats show my
> every day that “I” is not a human sentiment alone.
> My cat has a good awareness of time and space. If i come within range of
> his heating vent, he whacks me. He also has quite the time recall. So do
> animals in the wild, they just go by the moon clock.
Animals use their accute lower senses to easily live in complex space and time, but if tested cannot indicate what they are. Some animals achieve higher awareness, but still not full awareness—mirrors and TVs bring out examples of their lower consciousness. They don’t really ‘get’ their set and setting. I’m not sure if you’re appreciating the full extent of the automaticness of animals. They *automatically* go by the moon clock. Even humans are largely automatic. Our automatic qualities what make us more animal, less human.
> In society, I will argue that we don not care how animals are treated. The
> only ones treated with dignity are the ones that bring us any sense of
> pleasure.
Society suspends pleasure all the time. Many animals are treated respectfully apart from their pleasure-factor. However, indulgence does not suspend pleasure. As society decays it becomes more indulgent and the real purposes of activities become lost. Typically, we do things because they’re right and sometimes pleasure is a result. When we do things FOR pleasure, we end up with nothing in short order. —This is the dynamic that I feel destroys everything, including animals and nature.
> each other, ignoring the fact that carnivores HAVE to eat meat for survival.
This doesn’t show enough appreciation of the fact that animals do everything for survival. They can’t do anything else. —Which changes their relation/value vis’a’vis humans.
> But isn’t a worm more valuable? Not by itself, but the function in nature
> they serve? I could argue that biologically, worms are more important than
> all the life that supports itself above the ground.
Everything is necessary and you prove this point. But you’re left with the question of ‘important for what?’ Humans can take the position of leadership here. Biology isn’t the only value, for instance.
> How “should” they be “used?” Should they be used at all, or should they
> live free of harrassment? A rock is habitat. Removing it can displace all
> kinds of life. It is not sentient, not is a tree, but it supports life and
> that is good.
OK, automatic animals wandering around disturbing everything is fine. Weather and nature disturbing things is fine. Animals living and dying and life coming only from their dying is fine. But humans should NOT touch the rock? Good in nature only is sustained by humans NOT touching? This is classic misanthropism.
I say that the HOW/WHY of the human touch makes the difference. Disturbance in nature is neither good nor bad. Nature doesn’t care if people roll a log or if they exterminate a species. Nautral disturbance and valuation has no variance in the How/Why. It’s all automatic. We humans can Go Bad. So the only factor worth looking at is our motivation. It’s the only aspect that can make a difference…and it only makes a difference to us.
> Man has no natural “rights” he gives himself rights through force, as does
> all of nature.
Exactly. And any time he gives a right to someone or something else, he does it because of charity (def.: to show his love). Before the Age of the State, there was not much worry about rights. They were presumed. And when anyone gave powers or privileges to others they were called what they were: gifts. Nowadays, it seems that the issue of rights is one of state power. But even without any concern about rights, cultures could decide to not use cows for food or to disapprove the caging of animals. They could do it as a gift to themselves—if that made sense.
> >7. Given the physical animalism of humans, the choice to not
> >kill or to be a vegetarian is a religious act.
>
> No. It is a moral act, and the cornerstone of morality is not religion.
> Morality is something we have based on our hearts. Religion is not a good
> term for it. That implies belief in what may or may not be there. It
> implies a God.
It seems like your definition of religion has the taint of modern experience. The definition of religion is that practice which grounds us to the root of life. Whatever we do which does this is religion. Life is naturally whole. Only people can conceive of separations in it. Morality is that which helps us move toward wholeness. ‘Heart’ doesn’t seem to be the best term, either. But it indicates a mysterious movement toward wholeness. God=Good=Unity=Wholeness=Designed Function. These all seem related in ways that can’t be entirely defined.
> AR to me reflects a higher reverence for life.
But won’t it eventually run into contradiction? Doesn’t everything? And won’t it need a practice that helps it confess its ignorance and shame for this? Life lives and dies and needs death to live. Living requires you to do what you don’t want to. So you’ll be responsible for lots of death as you live *and* you’ll also have reverence for life. Does AR have a rite of appreciation for the needed sacrifice and the accidents? It seems entirely incomplete if AR consists only of ‘do not kill.’
> Interesting, but we should not use the tradition excuse for our behavior.
> We are capable of moral evolution. We should not continue to seperate
> ourselves from animals, then use the “animal instinct” excuse for
> brutality. The fact is that we have the capability to make choices and we
> have alternatives.
I would say that many cultures of all ages HAVE INDEED achieved vastly huge moral heights. Time is not of the essence here. The Indians and Greeks and legions of others were highly moral. *AND* they killed animals. They saw it was unavoidable. I just can’t see that we have an alternative. We are physically here on earth and there is a natural price for that = death that we might live. Round and round. Brutality has to do with how/why—not that killing happens. We are separate from animals in that we are human…*and* we are animal. Furthermore, time doesn’t mean an increase of morality for a culture—it’s entirely possible, unless fully scrutinized and answered in to the contrary, that AR is part and parcel of the *decline* of our culture. I believe that anything that takes a black or white view will be demonstrably blind to a great extent, and great evil comes in from the blind side.
> The gill net issue is not an AR issue.
> It is an issue of overexploitation of a resource and commercialism of
> fishing.
I bring up the Gill Net and Indians issue as a way in which our culture tries to work its way around a multicultural contradiction. We need to see its realities, more contradictions pop up. Of course such laws may well still be practically needed, but it doesn’t let us off the hook. If killing is wrong, it’s always been wrong and past cultures were wrong about their achievement and harmony. I.e., indians *seem* harmonious to us *and* they kill animals, but if it’s bad for us, it’s bad for them. We city people who conveniently have the dozen biases listed somehow can ‘know in our hearts’ that this is true. Without any contact with the lifestyles of these indians. —If they kill, they are wrong. They are breaking up the unity of nature.
> shoot the neighbors cat for sport. He draws his line, but does that make
> him a hypocrite? No. It makes him respectful of animals owned by humans
> because he thinks animals not owned are less important that those who are.
The point is that killing animals doesn’t make them less important. Pets are impt to be kept alive for their owners. Animals are impt in many ways—but food animals are impt in one way as food. Is there a way to respect a food animal? Did Indians respect the animals they killed? Could they still? I think so. Me, too. Also your observation of ‘drawing a line’ seems to be acknowledging the importance the HOW/WHY that I focus on. Sometimes it’s OK, other times not. There are answers and mysteries here.
> That is my beef. Why is there an uproar when some dummy lets his animals
> roam the wild country and then it becomes part of the natural food chain? So
> the general public learns to put human traits on animals and demands
> destruction of the predator because they think “he’ll be coming after me
> next.” As if he reasons like a human..
It’s a question of judgement. If you let your animals roam too far, you won’t be able to defend them and others of judgement won’t let you kill off all the predators. But when you have rats in your corn you can figure out a way to get rid of them. It’s not “putting human traits on animals” to worry about mt-lions being in suburbs…it’s yet another indicator of human’s increasing involvement in the ecosystem.
—
JP
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Jeff Potter
“Out Your Backdoor”
Magazine of Affordable Adventure and Informal Culture
