The Animal In Y-ewwww!

As an student of Literature and linguistics, I've had the concept of 'connotation' shoved down my throat since the day I first stepped into Parlin. Simply put, the term 'connotation' refers to the internalized mental image or list of words and emotions that a listener gets when hearing a word. For example, if I were to describe the Grand Canyon as "glorious landscape chiseled marvelously into the Arizona earth " , you would probably imagine it in a specific way, much different than if I were to describe it as a "deep, rusted cleft, gouged violently into an otherwise peaceful landscape". Every word carries with it a certain meaning. This idea of connotation can apply pretty easily to animal related words as well. Referring to certain animals, or events involving them, can be a useful linguistic tool to describe people or things in a hauntingly accurate manner.

For example, if I had a nickel for every time I heard someone described as a "cow" or a "pig", I wouldn't have to desperately be looking for a job right now. These animal-specific images carry with them explicit negative connotations that testify to our natural specieist tendencies. Joan Dunayer asks, "Why does metaphorical reference to the cow connote these traits while reference to the bull does not?" (786). As a culture, it seems that we have pre-labelled specific animals with specific traits. Rabbits are quick, turtles slow. Lions are proud. Mice are quiet. This is just something we have done in order to substitute our normal every day adjectives with colorful and exciting images. Unfortunately, some of these substitutions serve as reminders of our lack of respect, or our explicit disrespect for certain animals. Or do they? Dunayer essentially claims that by using animals to define humans (or specifically women), is disrespectful to women as a collective. By this token, could you argue that we are being equally disrespectful to the animals by associating them so willingly to cookie-cutter stereotypes?



When I grew up, I was taught by my mom not to tell random fat people that they were fat, or to tell bald people that they were bald, etc. I'm not questioning this courtesy, because I think social politeness and respect is fundamental to our success as a community, but should be held to the same standard when we are talking about animals? When I say someone eats like a cow, there is no question that I am being demeaning (sometimes humorously) to the person, but I am also being disrespectful of the cow (by human definition). Obviously, we don't care that cows are fat. I don't see a fat cow, and think to myself "Wow! That cow eats waaaaaay too much food. Gross!" That being said though, by calling someone a cow, we project their bovine-tendencies on others in a negative manner. We don't tell people they are cows because we thing that their eating habits are healthy. Does this offend cows at all? I really don't think they do.



Derrida defines one of the key characteristics of mankind is his knowledge and shame of being naked. We wear clothes to hide ourselves. Animals, on the other hand, don't give rat's hindquarters (see above paragraph) about being bare. "The property unique to animals and what in the final analysis distinguishes them from man, is their being naked without knowing it". So the question is this: when I'm in the room with a smelly friend John and my dog Pickles, and I tell my friend that he stinks like a dog, am I offending John AND Pickles? I'm going to have to say no.


And there is my daily dose of incoherence for the day.
Cheers!

Ethically Bound: A Fresh Look at the Humane Slaughter Act

For thousands of years, the question of ethics and morality has resurfaced in independent and isolated cultures all over the globe. Philosophers from all generations have tried to define morality in a cohesive and understandable way, but these definitions all seem to change. The basic premise is, however, that there are things in this world that are good and things that are evil, or, in more colloquial and modern terms, there is always a right and a wrong choice. For example, most people would agree that it would be ethically unjustifiable to physically assault an infant. This kind of action embodies something that is inherently wrong, or evil. With something like infant-assault, there is an almost universal judgment condemning it as something that violates some sort of unwritten ethical code. There are, unfortunately, many situations that merit a little more discussion before judgment can be made.

Greek poet, Aeschylus, wrote the tragedy Prometheus Bound to tell the moving story of Prometheus, and how he suffered for standing up against a mandate that he deemed to be ethically unfounded. In the play, Prometheus crosses Zeus by deliberately disobeying him, and giving fire to the humans and teaching them how to write, use tools, and a number of other useful things. By doing this, Prometheus obviously provoked Zeus' anger, and earned himself a terrible punishment: that he should be shackled to a boulder forever, and that each day a vulture would come and eat out his liver (which would grow anew every day). After reading his punishment for the first time, I found myself wondering about the reasons why Prometheus would ever have crossed Zeus in the first place. He didn't get anything out of it except maybe the satisfaction of frustrating Zeus, but I don't think that this was the reason for his action. Prometheus knowingly submitted himself to a terrible vengeance, meaning that he was either completely mad, or was operating under some different mode of reasoning.


In the play, there can be no doubt that Zeus is playing the role of an oppressive authoritative figure residing over humanity. It seems that his chief aim was to ensure that his creation exist solely to experience misery and hardship. He does not provide for them in any way other than to allow them to live. What makes Prometheus so special is that he is not only able to understand that there is evil being done, but also that he has the capacity to do something about it. He senses the injustice and then acts in spite of it. In titular and slightly masked terms, Prometheus is bound to a code of morals greater than the law. His actions are completely selfless.

Also in the play, we see a similar situation, handled in a completely different way. Hephaestus, smithy of the God's, has been charged by Zeus with the task of physically binding the guilty titan to the boulder. He is aware of Prometheus' plight, and is even sympathetic towards the titan. Hephaestus recognizes that Prometheus did the moral and correct thing, and believes the punishment to be unjust. In other words, he believes that Zeus' verdict was evil, and the punishment unfounded. However, Hephaestus chains him to the boulder anyways. He, like Prometheus, senses the injustice, but unlike Prometheus, he dismisses the recognition. Instead, he acts in a self-preserving manner.

If Hephaestus was put on trial for his actions, would he be found guilty of crimes against humanity? Are his actions tolerable? If there is any relative real-life situation to that of Hephaestus, it is undoubtedly the Nuremberg Trials. In the 1940's, Adolf Hitler led a massive horrifying campaign against Jews all across Europe. He stole them away from their homes, packed them into rail-cars, and shipped them off to concentration camps where they were starved, tortured, and killed. While Hitler was the one ultimately responsible for the Holocaust, he was not the only one at work. The Nazi party consisted of more than just Adolf Hitler: there was a whole host of people willing to do what Hitler told them to do. Armies, as well as most social organizations, work as a unit by means of hierarchy. After the Nazi's were defeated in 1945, after the murder of approximately 6 million European Jews, many of the Nazi leaders and ranking officers were put on trial for their war-time crimes. Many of them employed what came to be known as the Nuremberg Defense.

The Nuremberg Defense essentially argued that the accused party was simply following orders. For example, it is not an executioners job to pass judgment. Instead, it is his job to execute. In much the same way, Hephaestus, from Prometheus Bound, doesn't believe that it is his responsibility to contradict Zeus' orders. This would undoubtedly result in a punishment of his own. The same could be said for many of the Nazi's. To resist tyranny usually results in death. This Nuremberg Defense brings into the light a key ethical dilemma that we as humans deal with on an almost daily basis: Are we subject to national laws and mandates? Or are we, like Prometheus, bound to a higher ethical code? Is it even possible to enforce selflessness? These questions are all actually applicable in the way that we handle and deal with animals on a daily basis.

In 1958, The Humane Slaughter Act (HMSLA) passed as a federal law, requiring that animals should be stunned, or rendered unconscious before they are slaughtered in order to ensure as painless a death as possible for the animal. The U.S. has failed to effectively enforce this act, however, leaving many companies and slaughter houses unregulated, resulting in the continued inhumane slaughter and treatment of animals. While the HMSLA is a respectable first step towards ensuring at least a small degree of humanity in the slaughter process, it leaves too many issues unaccounted for, and many times forces the man actually doing the slaughtering to deal with the same ethical dilema that we see in the Nuremberg Defense. For example, similarly to the Nazi's system for persecuting Jews, the company executives themselves are responsible for determining how exactly the company itself is going to treat and slaughter its cattle. They then employ and expect workers to follow their business plan. Does this make the workers guilty of inhumane slaughter? Also, does it make consumers inhumane for buying meat from brands that don't guarantee humane treatment and slaughter of their product?

We cannot hold companies responsible for their treatment of animals if we eat their meats regularly. Instead, we are called stand up for what we believe, and to act in a selfless manner by not only condemning what many meat-manufacturing companies are doing as wrong, but also by taking action against these companies. Justice and humanity are more than just philosophical ideas that we talk about. They are concepts that require agents and action. In other words, they won't exist unless we do something about them.

The first step in creating a more humane way to raise and slaughter cattle is to make the legal changes necessary to force companies to stop taking the cheap way out. The HMSLA states that animals (not including chickens) must be "stunned" prior to slaughter. It fails to mention how they are to be treated before they are slaughtered, and also fails to regulate inhumane methods of slaughter. Before we can ensure slaughter is actually being done in a humane fashion, the HMSLA needs to be amended to include all of the factors mentioned above. It needs to specifically include all the animals involved in the food industry. In addition, the HMSLA must limit the methods of slaughter available to slaughterhouses. It is too tempting for executives looking to cut the cost of manufacturing to just choose the cheapest and, subsequently, most inhumane method of slaughter.



The second, and arguably most important, step towards a change, is for the Federal Government to actually enforce the act. Just like speed limits and littering laws, the HMSLA is completely useless if it cannot be enforced. This is going to require the Federal Government to spend money on employees to go to the slaughterhouses at regular intervals to check and make sure companies are taking the HMSLA to heart.

Both of these steps take place on a national level, meaning that they need to be recognized and national necessities. In order to effectively garner recognition as a serious ethical issue, it needs backing from devoted and articulate spokesmen. A movement is always a social phenomenon involving members of the social body. The best way for people to get on board with this movement would simply be to write a letter to your representative or senator informing him of your concern. Another way to express your concern is to consume only meats and products that you know to be humanely processed.

Like Prometheus, we all need to act according to a higher and more perfect ethical code than what is laid out by our Federal Government. It is important, however, to understand that we are not going to be tied to a rock for all eternity if we decide to regulate the meat that we eat. The worst that could happen is that you simply don't eat meat for a while.



Word Count (no quotes): 1548


Sources:
Image 1: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/RM/Prometheus3Griepenkerl.jpg

Image 2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Industrial-Chicken-Coop.JPG

Racism and Specieism

According to our text, racism is defined as being "a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others" (762). It then defines specieism as "a belief that different species of animals are significantly different from one another in their capacities to feel pleasure and pain and live an autonomous existence, usually involving the idea that one's own species has the right to rule and use others" (762). According to these definitions, I think it is safe to say that we live in a world dominated and ruled by humans, making us specieist. Whether or not this is wrong is another discussion entirely, but I want to take a brief look at the comparison between racism and specieism.

English philosopher Jeremy Bentham writes, "The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny" (757). As a culture, we are obsessed with rights. This country was founded on John Locke's idea of natural rights that all humans have. Can we assume then, that all living creatures have rights as well? More specifically, do animals have rights? If they do, then there can be no doubt that we are a world bent on animal oppression, but if animal's don't have rights, then I guess we can wash our hands and continue to trek on in the name of science and pleasure.

Let's take a quick look at slavery. What was it? Oppression of one human by another in order extract some form of work, pleasure, or entertainment. Why did it exist? People believed that they had the right to force their will upon other people they thought to be inferior to them. That being said, is our treatment of animals comparable to slavery? I want to say yes, but I have a serious problem with comparing animals to humans, because...quite frankly, animals aren't humans. Does this justify the mistreatment of animals? Of course not, but I can see no way in which a cow or a horse is like a human in a real, natural way.

I believe that as a human race, we are, for the most part, disgusted with cruelty to animals when we are the ones being oppressive. We react to it in weird ways. Alice Walker writes, "And we are used to drinking milk from containers showing "contented" cows, whose real lives we want to hear nothing about, eating eggs and drumsticks from "happy" hens, and munching hamburgers advertised by bulls of integrity who seem to command their fate" (761) We lie to ourselves constantly about things like where the food we eat comes from. I think books like The Giving Tree have completely skewed our idea of survival. Thomas Hobbes, philosopher, writes that in a state of nature, life is nasty, brutish, and short. Life is not a pretty thing, but we like to put bright stickers and catchy slogans on our food to trick ourselves into thinking it was freely given. This is something that makes sense to me, but it is so strange to me at the same time. Eating is natural. We do it, animals do it. Everything does it. Why do we like to candy coat it so much?



What I'm getting at is this: we are disgusted when we see humans hurting and oppressing animals, but we could care less when we see animals eat each other. Well, obviously we have our biases, but I think it is safe to say that we all admire some animals ability to hunt. The other day I was watching Life (the new Planet Earth style documentary on Discovery). They had a segment on cheetahs, showing a pack of three cheetahs hunt and take down an ostrich. I wasn't offended in the least. If they had shown three humans taking down an ostrich, I would have probably stared at the TV in disgust for a few minutes, then felt bad about the human race for the next week or so.



Assuming that we are, in fact, guilty of maliciously oppressing animals, Alice Walker says that our sense of guilt and regret is only a first response. "What we do with our heightened consciousness is the question" (764). I feel like this is a safe thing to say to anyone, regardless of whether or not they believe that animals have rights equal to humans. It was clear, or at least it is now, that slavery was a twisted institution. Are animals so essential to our survival as a human race that we MUST oppress them in the cruelest ways possible? If the slave owners of colonial America had understood what we understand about human rights now, would it have been right to abolish slavery then? This is me rambling because I wrote a 13 page paper last night... I have completely forgotten what I was trying to say. I'll get back to this later...

Fictionally Speaking...

A couple of days ago in class, we discussed (briefly) what we thought the best vehicle for sympathetic imagination was: fiction or non-fiction? Is it more effective to give some one a list of numbers and facts, or are people moved more by fiction?


I think we are all familiar with the effects that facts have on us. Non-fiction stuns you and leaves you in shock. I remember hearing about the 2006 Indonesian Tsunami and how it instantly killed 200,000 people. Just hearing about it left me feeling sick. I was emotionally moved. Facts and numbers definitely have the ability to stir me. Can fiction produce this same result?

Kafka, in his "A Report for an Academy", writes a pretty strange and confusing narrative about his previous life as an ape. When I read it, at first I was confused and a little disturbed, but then Kafka's imagination started to work on me a little. At one point, the "ape" is in a cage, and he thinks, "In all of them, however, there was only one feeling: no way out" (659). After hearing this, I really began to put myself in the shoes of the ape, figuratively speaking.


Albert Ernest Flemming's translation of The Panther on page 665 had a very similar effect on me.
"His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in over smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable."
While this isn't necessarily comparable to Dante or Shakespeare, it is still beautifully written. After reading it, I feel more sympathetic and compassionate towards the panther. It is not just one of thousands of panthers, but rather it is a concrete, living, breathing creature in a cage.

Fiction combines fact and color, making it, in my opinion, more able to produce a lasting effect on it's audience.

Nazi's and Me

As a continuation to the whole WWII being a reflection of specieism argument, Isaac Bashevis Singer, a holocaust survivor and advocate for the Animal Rights/Holocaust comparison, writes "In htier behavior towards creatures, all men [are] Nazis" (732). This is, obviously, a pretty harsh and unfounded claim that is more irritating than anything else, but is there any truth at all to it? It is hard to me to rationalize a direct comparison between everyday meat-eating humans and the radical Nazi party. It seems to me that you can point out similarities in the actions against Jews by the Nazis, and the actions against animals by Humans, but I don't think that merits a direct comparison. I would argue that this is really a question of intent. Why did Nazi's persecute the Jews? Was it for food? Was it to conduct medical experiments and ultimately improve the quality of life for themselves? No. I was always taught, and I think this is right..., that the Nazi's thought that Jews were a plague to the human race. They were not PRIMARILY an opportunity for medical advancement or profit. The Nazi party argued that they were an inferior race, and the world would be better off with out them. This was their initial argument for persecution. What happened afterwards is no secret. People were exploited, tortured, and killed.
Now, let me take a look at myself. I eat animals. Does this make me a Nazi? I doubt it. I, for one, love animals. I love being around them, talking about them, looking at them, etc. I love how naturally and beautifully they fit into this world. I can't imagine a world without them, and I hate trying to do so. I feel like MOST people also fit into this category. Clearly, the intent is different. So why, if our intent is so different from the Nazi's, does the outcome look so similar? We drive cattle into giant cramped factories where they are exploited, tortured, and slaughtered...sounds eerily familiar. I feel like a lot of it is how far removed the product is from the production. When I go eat a Crispy Chicken Sandwhich from Wendy's, I don't see pictures of the meat plant, I don't hear the sounds of the machinery and brutal living conditions, I don't witness the cattle being killed. Instead, I just see the tasty looking sandwhich.



Instead of saying that we are all Nazi's when dealing with animals, I would argue that we are both (Nazi's and us) part of a larger group. "Pain is pain, no matter what the species of the being that feels it." (637) Nazi's were famous for having no reservations about inflicting horrifying amounts of pain and brutality on the Jews in order to achieve their ultimate goal of extermination. In the same way, we are capable of justifying the same thing (the torture and 'murder' of animals) in order to achieve our own goals. This is a comparison that isn't really refutable. If you buy a burger, you are endorsing specieism. Buut there is definitely a large disconnect between the two. Nazi's were committing crimes against humanity. Man killing man. I am committing crimes (this implies a set of laws, which I don't think exists. I personally have no problems eating meat) against animals. Man killing animals. There is a clear difference here, and I would argue that humans and animals are in no way equal beings. Buut that is a whole different argument. I'm just trying to lay out the comparison here.



"Should he mourn? Is it proper to mourn the death of beings who do not practise mourning among themselves? Looking into his heart, he can find only a vague sadness" (679). Can we, and should we mourn the death of "beings who do no practice mourning among themselves"? What makes the death of an animal so much less significant than the death of a human? Is that the way it should be? When Jake (my dog of 13 years) died my senior year in high school, I was definitely sad for a week or so, but there is just no comparison between the death of a dog and the death of a human. If my sister died, I would be completely torn apart. Does this make me a Nazi? Hopefully not.

Animals and the Holocaust

Last week, while reading Lewis Carroll's essay on Vivisection, I was a little struck by Carroll's claim that the greatest tragedy of vivisection is not the crime against the animal, but the crime within the experimenter. At first, this seemed a little backwards to me because I always thought that the reason some people are so adamant about animal rights and vegetarianism and all of that stuff is because they believe that animals are, in fact, equal in some way to humans. I can't agree with this, but Carroll's claim that we are in fact hurting ourselves when we are cruel to animals makes sense to me.



J.M. Coetzee (in true Carroll fashion), in her work The Lives of Animals claims that the chief horror of the Holocaust is that the killers "refused to see themselves in the place of their victims, as did everyone else." (??) There can be no doubt in my mind that crimes against humans ALWAYS outweigh crimes against animals, but Coetzee's argument here mirrors Carroll's argument in his aforementioned essay. Oppression against and violence towards other fellow beings totally destroys our human character. As humans, we all have the capacity for things like sympathy, compassion, and love. This is what makes it beautiful to be a human. During WWII, Nazi doctrine essentially required that it's soldiers abandon their compassionate and sympathetic nature. Not only were Jews being physically torn apart, but the Nazi's were violently rending themselves from their own humanity.



In our course packet on the readings comparing the Holocaust to violence against animals, Bentham makes a point about the shirking of responsibility for the tragedy and crimes against humanity. During the Nuremberg Trials, "men often denied that they were guilty, because they 'were only following orders." (744) In the same way, I feel like people can justify being cruel to animals because they have to do it for money, or because if they don't they will get fired. After watching Earthlings though, I am compelled to say that some people do it because they legitimately enjoy being cruel. I would argue that all people are born with a sense of right and wrong, and that all people are also born with the ability to feel compassion and have sympathy. When we are forced into situations where we "have" to compromise or violate our morals, our ethical stance is blurred and we lose touch with our humanity. In this way, people who work in cattle plants and slaughter houses become sadistic.

To take the allegory just a little bit further, let's take just a deeper look at the Nuremberg Trials (because I think this is pretty interesting stuff...). This "I was just following orders" excuse not only is something that can easily be applied to the justification of pointless violence against animals (PVAA!), but it is something that really should be avoided altogether in a much larger sense. We talked about this in class last week very briefly, but if you are in a situation that requires you to violate your own morals, you need to have the strength of character to stand up for what you believe. In Prometheus Bound, we see the same moral dilemma. Prometheus, a titan, has just stood up for his belief even though he had to break Zeus' law to do it. Now, he is being convicted and punished for it. Zeus' punishment requires that Prometheus be shackled to a rock for all eternity, so Zeus sends for Olympus' favorite smithy, Hephestus, to make some mackles (magic shackles!) that will never break. Hephestus doesn't believe that the punishment is just, but he does it anyway. Like the Nazi's of WWII, or the workers in meat factories, Hephestus bails on his own moral convictions for a more appealing attempt at self-preservation. The question, however, is that is it better to preserve yourself physically (to keep yourself free from violence and death) or to preserve yourself morally?



There is supposed to be another quote in here but I don't have my book with me at the moment, so I might stick it in here when I get home.