There are moments in this class where I have questioned if the attack we make on animals every day can be compared to such devastating attacks upon humanity, such as the Holocaust and Slavery. I came to such a question by the time of my second blog entry after reading Derrida, who dares to ask the reader “As if, for example, instead of throwing people into ovens or gas chambers (let’s say Nazis) doctors and geneticists had decided to organize the overproduction and overgeneration of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals by means of artificial insemination, so that, being more numerous and better fed, they could be destined in always increasing numbers for the same hell, that of the imposition of genetic experimentation or extermination by gas or fire?”(225-226)” I followed up this quote with the statement that “I agree that the human treatment of animals is as appalling as it is unjust, but the parallel drawn here disturbs me – and I still do not know why.” Much like this statement, the rest of my blog was largely blurry and I can remember the confusion I felt even as I wrote. But the blurriness is starting to fade and I am beginning to realize one thing – animals are not humans. The reason why Derrida’s comments, along with Elizabeth Costello’s accusations in Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, offend me the way they do is that I find it morally inexcusable to take a level of human suffering of such great magnitude and use it to further a cause that is distinctly different.
Ironically, I think the plea Costello and Derrida use does more to distance the listener from the cause of animal rights than connect them to it. Amy Gutmann’s introduction made it clear to me why I am so offended by the Holocaust comparison when she quotes “the quiet anger of a poet who objects to Elizabeth Costello’s analogy between the murdered Jews of Europe and slaughtered cattle” who writes “’If Jews were treated like cattle,’ he says, ‘it does not follow that cattle are treated like Jews. The inversion insults the memory of the dead’”(297). Moreover, it may be questioned whether “the Holocaust could ever be part of any analogy”(297). The way we treat animals is markedly morally questionable, if not irrefutably unethical. But when I watched Earthlings, the comparison drawn between the Holocaust and our treatment of animals made me resistant to hear what the film actually had to say. The images and the videos of the animals would have been enough. Why did they have to compare it to human suffering? In my opinion, it only lowered the cause it sought to elevate.
Despite disagreeing with this particular comparison, there was some truth to be found in the statements Costello made. The most touching to me, in particular, was her discussion about ignorance. Ignorance does not equal innocence. She discusses how Germans, in her eyes, “lost their humanity...because of a certain willed ignorance on their part”(64). Although once again, I do not support the comparison she is making here between Germans and meat-eaters, there is some validity in what she is saying.
Blissful Ignorance?
I went my entire life choosing to be ignorant of the products I used and the animals I ingested. I never felt part of their suffering. I do, indeed, believe that this ignorance has left a genuine impact on how “humane,” or ethical I consider myself to be. I turned a blind eye because it was easier and I thought it made me immune to my moral responsibility to respect all forms of life. The way we treat animals is undoubtedly inhumane, not because animals are humans, but because it diminishes the code of ethics that makes us human.
I am the vessel that holds all of you. I am the one left stranded here the day you decided to carry on -- without the baggage of your past. I am the memories that you pushed violently away at first and then left to drift behind you when you moved too fast for them to catch up. I was there, first walking and then running, behind you to pick up the pieces. But your footsteps are too far ahead for me to reach and I cannot find my way here alone. So I walk now through the deserts of your past, picking up shards of memories that cut like glass and burn like the hot sand under my feet. And it is too late to turn back because, you see, I have no footsteps. The only thing that holds me is the fact that I held you. I am a shadow that lost her way, a loner looking for home, and a vessel cracking on all sides. So I must ask you, if you are so far ahead, where will the sun be to give me my light? Where can I find my map to guide me home? And who will hold the vessel that holds me?
I wrote this unsent letter to my sister just one year ago. Originally intended as a journal entry, then a letter, and finally as a reminder of what it is that I am searching for, it became one of the single most important pieces I have ever written. I spent my entire life holding the weight my family felt too burdensome to carry. Their pilgrimage became my pilgrimage, leaving no space for complaint or self-discovery. So when I found myself three hours away from the family that defined me, I lost myself entirely. By the time I left Dallas to come to the University of Texas, my sister’s addiction to cocaine, stays in Juvenile, and constant running away had come to a close. My parent’s marriage had also long since dissipated. But the weight persisted. Walking, I often hunched my back and pushed my shoulders forward to hold the burden, leaving me with sore shoulders and a distinct slouch I still carry with me. I blamed the tenderness on the heavy backpack I carried to school each day, but soon realized after only a few weeks of college with no need for a backpack, that my shoulders would forever hold the pain of something more than just physical strain. What I did not know at the time, however, was that the burden I held would pale in comparison to the burden I placed on this earth and the creatures that inhabit it.
The ache began the first day I came home after seeing my sister in Juvenile. I cried until my body shook and my shoulders trembled. I cried until the book between my hands dampened and its edges wilted. I cried until my cat, Maggie, came to hold my pain for me. I still do not fully understand how she came to know how to rest herself on my shoulders or to wrap her paws around my neck whenever I began to cry. But I suppose that it is not as important as the fact that she did. With my dad withdrawn in his office and my mom crying in the bedroom, Maggie came to me as my vessel to lift the burden and relieve the ache, if only temporarily.
I returned to school that Monday with no urge to talk about what I saw or how I had cried. Instead, I got lost in working with long division beads, shown below [1], and painting in the lunchroom. This pattern continued on throughout elementary and middle school. Each day I came to school, no matter what I witnessed the weekend before or at home at night, and I would walk in the door, shake my shoulders free of the baggage and entrench myself in the learning environment.
Long division beads similar to those I used in elementary school
Going to a Montessori school, I worked with natural materials instead of papers and workbooks, demonstrated in the video below [2]. Montessori forced me to realize, mostly through “practical life” activities such as gardening, setting the table, and cooking, how to gain a sense of and responsibility for my surroundings. In this environment separate from chaos and closer to simplicity, I suddenly found the world manageable.
As the years carried onward, the more abstract my education became, working less in “practical life” and long division beads, and more with papers and books. Simultaneously, however, I began to have more interactions with nature through class camping excursions and trips to the “Melissa Campus,” a place where we could explore natural Texas wildlife and study about fossils, botany, and water forms. But despite my education in nature, I cannot recall a single encounter with any animals on either of these types of trips. For this reason, Montessori did not instill in me the respect for animals that seemingly a respect for nature would call for. In other words, I appreciated the magnificence of the earth with no knowledge or regard to the animals that inhabited it. Ironically, one of the major goals of Montessori is to put “the child in touch with environment, and [help] him to learn to make intelligent choices and carry out research in a prepared environment” [3]. But I was not in touch with my environment – in fact, I sat so far outside its bounds that I became part of its burden. Animals carried my weight.
My shoulders bent so far forward that my eyes turned themselves downward to the cruelty with which I unknowingly treated animals, and now knowingly continue to treat animals, by eating meat and consuming animal products. I “appreciated” my cat, Maggie, while treating her as a pet and not a fellow being. I explored the environment with no notice to the species that inhabited it. I continued to eat meat even after I watched the violent treatment of animals in the film, Earthlings. Too concerned with my own hunched shoulders, I never realized whose shoulders I placed the burden on – animals. Moreover, I stood so high atop their shoulders that I could not hear their voices or their cries.
There were times, however, that I truly believe I allowed animals to walk by my side and not beneath my heavy feet. When Maggie grew sick from a rare kidney disease, I would hold her the way she held me. When her body grew weak and feeble, I would lay her against my chest and rock her until she purred her way into oblivion of all pain, similar to the girl in the picture below.
My Vessel, Maggie [4]
This, I believe, should be the goal of all humans – to have this kind of reciprocal relationship with all animals. Barry Lopez, an author mainly concerned with American Indian tradition and experience, writes in an essay entitled “A Literature of Place” that “It may be more important now to enter into an ethical and reciprocal relationship with everything around us than to continue to work toward the sort of control of the physical world that, until recently, we aspired to” [5]. Just as I lifted the weight of her pain, she lifted the weight of mine. Maggie loved me with no conditions and nothing for me to hold in exchange for such love – except her.
When Maggie passed away in 2005, the absence of her love left me feeling heavier than ever. Similar to the loss John Graves describes in his piece, “Blue and Other Dogs,” the space an animal leaves when it passes away is big [6]. Ironically, it is emptiness that made my shoulders feel heavy once more. The ache began as soon as I came home after school the day she was put to sleep. I cried until my body shook and my shoulders trembled. I cried until the books between my hands dampened and their edges wilted. I cried, and for the first time in thirteen years, there was no Maggie to come lift the pain, if only temporarily.
So the weight persisted. It followed me through the rest of high school and eventually all the way to Austin. I took my experience with Maggie as a singular event – one that had no effect on my treatment of other animals. It would be easy to say that pets are different and that my treatment of other species does not matter. But it matters. Animals are not humans, but they are living, breathing beings that feel the burden pain brings. Maggie will always remind me of that.
So here comes the choice – I can continue on with slouched shoulders, treading through this earth with no footprints, or I can turn my head upward and lead with eyes forward and outward, leaving deep footprints in my wake. I can become “the companion of a place, not its authority, not its owner” [7]. Specifically, I can care for the animals I have so willingly taken advantage of by no longer supporting an industry that chooses not only how they will die, but how they will live. I can educate myself by going out into nature to experience other beings besides myself. I can finally shake my shoulders free and let this earth be the vessel that holds me.
"Shelter" - Ray LaMontagne "I guess you don't need it I guess you don't want me to repeat it But everything I have to give I'll give to you It's not like we planned it You tried to stay, but you could not stand it To see me shut down slow As though it was an easy thing to do Listen when All of this around us'll fall over I tell you what we're gonna do You will shelter me my love And I will shelter you I will shelter you I left you heartbroken, but not until those very words were spoken Has anybody ever made such a fool out of you It's hard to believe it Even as my eyes do see it The very things that make you live are killing you Listen when all of this around us'll fall over I tell you what we're gonna do You will shelter me my love I will shelter you Listen when All of this around us'll fall over I tell you what we're gonnado You will shelter me my love I will shelter you If you shelter me too I will shelter you I will shelter you."
Endnotes:
1.Long Division, Danville Montessori School, Danville, Kentucky, http://danvillemontessorischool.org/images/longdivision.jpg (accessed February 12, 2009). 2.This film illustrates the "practical life" exercises specific to Montessori Schools, especially setting the table and working with "natural materials." Such exercises lead to a "sensory awareness" of one's environment and are believed to contribute largely to developing a Montessori child's independence. See Toddler Day Care -Montessori influenced -sensorial & practical, dir. Erica Thomas, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDZRE9smmYg (accessed February 12, 2009). 3. This article discusses the importance of a specific learning environment in Montessori education, where the child works with natural materials in an environment organized by subject areas, including "cooking, cleaning...[and] caring for animals." Montanaro, "Montessori Materials and Learning Environments," Montessori: The International Montessori Index, section goes here, http://www.montessori.edu/index.html (accessed February 9, 2009). 4. Pawsitive Print Photography. http://pawsitiveprints.com/gallery.html (accessed February 14, 2009). 5. In this essay, Barry Holstrum Lopez explores the interaction between humans and nature and the necessity for an "ethical and reciprocal relationship" between the two. He is especially influenced by the American Indian experience and the connect indigenous people have with landscape. Barry H. Lopez, "A Literature of Place," USIA Electronic Journals 1, no. 10 (August 1996): 47. 6. Famous for his tales of nature, this short story explores the specific relationship between Graves and the dog he loved most, Blue. This particular excerpt discusses the emptiness with which Blue’s disappearance left. John Graves, "Blue and Some Other Dogs," Texas Monthly (1980): 135. 7. Barry H. Lopez, "A Literature of Place," USIA Electronic Journals 1, no. 10 (August 1996): 46. 8. Although this song makes no reference to a vessel, the idea of using this earth to shelter me seemed especially relevant. The lines "You will shelter me, my love, and I will shelter you" I believe perfectly captures the reciprocal relationship humans should have with nature. "Shelter," Ray LaMontagne, online music, 2004, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3UfvSjo0L4 (accessed February 9, 2009).
Am I a kind person? It’s a simple question, but nevertheless one I tend to push aside. I used to be able to say with certainty that I was a good person – someone who was always looking out for others. Statistically speaking, I won all the superficial superlatives in school that pigeonhole your identity so in fifteen years, even if your former classmates don’t remember your name, they’ll be able to remember you were the “biggest flirt” or “most likely to succeed.” The champion of the “Kindest” award in middle school, the “humblest” in high school, and the winner of an “Ethics” award my senior year, I had to be a good person – right? I’m not so sure. Every Tuesday and Thursday I am faced with the fact that my treatment of animals makes my kindness questionable if not completely non-existent. According to Dick, it is our treatment and compassion for animals that determines our very humanity. Kindness for me was always about how I treated other humans – what did animals have to do with it? As it turns out, it has a lot to do with it. Compassion is defined as “The feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it; pity that inclines one to spare or to succour”(236). What I found most surprising about this excerpt is that the word “human” is not included in the definition of compassion. The definition refers only to “another” – which could hypothetically include the entire spectrum of everything that is living. If we are compassionate beings, then shouldn’t we have compassion for all forms of life? This is where my own level of kindness comes into question. To be genuinely kind means to have some form of compassion and point of relation between yourself and “another.” Why have I, for so long, excluded the importance of compassion for animals in this equation? Habit or choice?
On a similar note, one of the most striking notions in Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Sleep was that Phil Resch’s lack of mercy for androids made him indeed less empathetic. Rick, finds himself in sharp contrast to Resch, realizing that “throughout his psyche he experience the android as a clever machine—as in his conscious view. And yet, in contrast to Phil Resch, a difference had manifested itself”(141). If even androids hold some form of life and reason for empathy, then imagine the level of compassion we should exhibit towards animals. Once again, this idea brings in the notion of respect and kindness for “another” and not just “another human.” Kindness is only a piece of the puzzle, however. The more important question I seem to be asking myself is if I am capable or willing to change? If I am emotionally intelligent, I should be able to not only exhibit “self-control” and “manage [my] disturbing emotions and impulses, and...channel them in useful ways”(263), but I should also learn to become a “change catalyst,” or a leader who can “catalyze change...recognize the need for change, challenge the status quo, and champion the new order”(264). Now that I am conscious of my treatment of animals, eating meat on a regular basis has become an undeniably conscious choice. When I stop by Quiznos in between classes or order my favorite meal – half a pastrami sandwich on Jewish rye with a side of potato salad – I am no longer inadvertently supporting the slaughter of animals I am supposed to have compassion for. My habit has become my choice.
...And I can't believe that this is what I have chosen.
On a similar note, in Sara’s blog, she said that “The viewers might feel sad for the animal, sympatric at best, but has no real connections to the animal: they never met them before, and they never will.” She’s right – how can I learn how to truly put myself in the shoes of an entirely other being? I cannot. But I can certainly be moved by their pain and moreover, I can make the choice to help relieve it. In Dick’s novel, the only thing that separates humans from androids is their empathy and capacity for kindness. The trouble for me is that I do not believe animals should be treated in the exact same manner as humans. In my mind, there is an undeniable, distinct difference between a human and an animal. The trouble here, however, is that this reasoning has allowed me to deny animals of the compassion and respect they rightfully deserve. Maybe it’s not about treating them like humans – maybe it’s just about giving them the respect any life deserves. Moreover, it is not the eating of meat that disturbs me, it is the fact that these meat industries have robbed them of a life. Watching “Earthlings” and seeing baby chicks been debeaked, baby cows being strapped to a wall and fed a purely liquid diet, and “milk” cows dying from exhaustion after being hooked up to tubes their entire lives, it has become apparent to me, now more than ever, that I have helped to rob a living, breathing, feeling being of a life.
So am I kind person? I’m not sure, but if I’m as “emotionally intelligent” as I hope I am, I will be.
So I know this is not the way I am supposed to begin a critique or discussion of the reading, but the truth is, I am extremely frustrated. For as long as I can remember, I have created a barrier between myself and animals. But the more articles I read, the more my stance on animals has begun to shift. Sitting here, writing this blog, I am completely uncomfortable because I keep drifting further and further away from my previous beliefs. Everything is sort of falling apart for me, but it is my hope by the end of the semester I’ll have been able to pick up the pieces to make a new puzzle – one that hopefully takes a stronger, more ethical stance on my relationship with animals. Since I am far from having any of the answers, I thought I might pose some of the questions I had while reading the texts.
The first and most frequent question I had while reading was what creates the barrier between animals and humans?
Derrida seems to provide the best response, claiming that their inability to “respond”(288) has allowed humans to narrow a vast spectrum of the living into one category – “animals.” He writes that “Animal is a word that men have given themselves the right to give. These humans are found giving it to themselves, this word, but as if they had received it as an inheritance. They have given themselves the word in order to corral a large number of living beings within a single concept: ‘the Animal’”(228 I loved what Josephine wrote in her blog regarding Derrida’s comments about the great barrier: “He believes that man has a need to group animals into a collective sub-species, a species that can never rise among the ranks of humans. On this planet, on this earth, on this land that both humans and animals inhabit, there exists a great divide. On this planet, on this earth, on this land exist organisms that man will never esteem as his equal, his peer, his brother.” It is as if we have created this word in order to create an entitlement – a justification for treatment that is far from just. The barrier, then, seems less physical and more mental and reflects our own inability to see animals as “peers,” as Josephine writes. I never once considered how vague the term animal is and how genuinely inappropriate it is to create a category that encapsulates everything that is living but not “human.” If we can group such creatures of “infinite space,” such as, “lizard from dog...the shark from the lamb, the parrot from the chimpanzee, the camel from the eagle...”(228), what is keeping us from placing humans in the same category as “animals?”
Apparently, however, we have also created a hierarchy of animals – deeming some more important than others. We seem to use these hierarchies to build even higher walls between ourselves and the “animal” world that surrounds us. In the third definition of “animal” provided in the text, it says that “In common usage” an animals is defined as “one of the lower animals; a brute, or beast; as distinguished from man”(229). Firstly, what defines a “lower” animal and secondly, what separates us from a “brute” or a “beast” if we are so mercilessly abusing these animals? While I agreed with the larger part of Justin Locasio’s blog, I am not sure I agree with the idea that we are the “advanced race” anymore. Reading Derrida and these vague and unjustified definitions of animals and humans, I’m no longer confused as to why my stance on animals versus humans has been so easily broken down. It is because the terms were without evidence in the first place.
The second question I had in reading these texts was if there is such a thing as animal humanity? I know this might seem like taking a step back, since the more I seemed to read, the more I realized that the line between “animals” and “humans” is blurry, to say the least. But it is questionable to me if we can apply the same treatment of humans to animals.
Above all else, what the reading, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, seemed to imply to me was that an empathy for animals is what in fact makes us human. It is with the measure of how Rachel feels about the objectification of animals that determines whether she is an “andy” or not. When Rachel’s response to Rick’s babyhide briefcase is delayed, he is more clear than ever that she cannot be fully human. Although Rick sees “the two dial indicators gyrate frantically,” he realizes they do so “only after a pause. The reaction had come, but too late”(59). This is what it means to be human – the ability to empathize with the living beings that surround us. According to Dick, humanity and animals are inextricably tied together. Even realizing the importance of how we treat the natural world that surrounds us, my gut feeling says there is something wrong about comparing the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust to our daily assault on animals. My third question, and the one I am still struggling with the most, is if there is reason in the comparison between the Holocaust and the mass maltreatment of animals is justified?
It seems from these pictures that there is, indeed, reason for comparisson.
Derrida writes, “As if, for example, instead of throwing people into ovens or gas chambers (let’s say Nazis) doctors and geneticists had decided to organize the overproduction and overgeneration of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals by means of artificial insemination, so that, being more numerous and better fed, they could be destined in always increasing numbers for the same hell, that of the imposition of genetic experimentation or extermination by gas or fire?”(225-226) I agree that the human treatment of animals is as appalling as it is unjust, but the parallel drawn here disturbs me – and I still do not know why. Perhaps it is because I am not yet willing to treat animals with the same level of humanity as I do to other humans on a daily basis. I agree that they deserve a great deal of respect, but as blurry as the lines become between animals and humans with each reading, I am not sure I can (yet) provide the same level of humanity in my treatment of animals.
The “Sympathetic Imagination” helped clear away some of the blurriness that Derrida’s comments created for me. “Sympathetic Imagination” is taking a step beyond empathy – it is the act of traveling into the object itself. It “consists not in reading into the object subjective feelings aroused by it in the observer, but in perceiving, by instinctive but sagacious insight, the essential character and reality of the object itself”(241). This theory is fascinating to me because it involves more than learning to sympathize for these animals – it is about learning how to recognize ourselves as these animals. As common beings, rather than animal vs. man, I might be less appalled by the parallel made between the Holocaust and man’s treatment of animals.
But there is undoubtedly something terrifying in what I have read in these texts and seen in Earthlings. I cannot say it has induced the same response as the first time I read Elie Wiesel’s Night or saw pictures of victims of the Holocaust with their cheeks caved in and their bones practically pushing through their skin. More than pictures, there is a power in the “response” that the survivors could show the world when the Holocaust ended. What would we think of the Holocaust if there were no testimonials? Would it be easier to ignore its existence in history? The truth is, Bentham is right when he says “the question is not to know whether the animal can think, reason, or talk, something we still pretend to be asking ourselves”(226) – it is whether they have suffered. If we could eliminate the barriers created by the word “animal” and follow the theory of “Sympathetic Imagination,” perhaps we could give voices to the animals we’ve deemed voiceless, and thus unimportant. Moreover, if we could describe these animals pain, maybe we could break down the walls between animals and humans that have become so high that I can barely see over them.
