Neither imitation applies. Yesterday's opening should have been presented simply as inspired by the Declaration's opening assumption of the rights of man. Then go on from there.
I still think, though, that a useful parallel might be developed with the 1776 document's declaration of independence—even if, in the case of animal rights, independence is a more complex concept than political independence from England. For in the case of animal rights, from what would independence be declared? And for whom or what?
It's not simply a question of animals' independence from something (cruel treatment at our hands, for one essential thing), but also of our independence—from a variety of things: our meat-eating tradition, the market power of the meat industry, perhaps even our inner demons (in contrast to the "better angels of our nature")? A serious obstacle to achieving our "independence" from those (and other) things is that most of them would require a giving-up of something most of us now value—even value so highly as to consider necessity.
I've given the article a new, more accurate title. Its original title is shown below. Despite its being misleading, I'm glad I made a start, however halting and tentative my first step.
New Declaration of Independence
A couple of years ago, I wrote an alternative version of the Ten Commandments1. And the other day, I suggested that, on behalf of animal rights, the poem "Twas the Night before Christmas" needed updating to show that all was not peace upon Earth at that time of the year:
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the slaughterhouse....My impulse to revise the creeds by which we ought to live has been extending for days to our Declaration of Independence, which declared in writing the "unalienable rights of man."
Other animals, too, I do believe, have rights. And if "the rights of man" existed before they were championed by Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and codified in the Declaration of Independence, then so, too, perhaps, did those more fundamental rights of animals. Or, if the rights of man didn't really always exist, but came to exist only by the essential act of a people's pretending that they did and proclaiming them in writing, then a similar pretense and proclamation could be made on behalf and for the sake of animals who cannot speak for themselves.
It is from that understanding and in that spirit that I propose a New Declaration of Independence. It might open like this:
When, in the course of animal events, it becomes necessary for the animals with a voice to speak for those that have none, and to assume among the powers of the earth the station to which their place in cultural evolution calls them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to speak for the unspeaking.The recognition of human rights took time, and so will the recognition of animal rights. Conscience calls upon me to begin speaking for the unspeaking, now rather than later.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all animals are created equal with respect to certain unalienable rights, that among these are life....
_______________
- My statement of the New Ten Commandments needs further revision, mainly to reduce their number so as to avoid redundancy. That was the motivation for the late George Carlin's radical reduction of their number to two.
Mo, you haven't thought this through at all. First, the D of I is a piece of reasoning to justify
ReplyDeleteindependence from England. So a parallel doc for animals would reason why they should
be independent… from humans, maybe. What you want to draft is an Animal Bill of Rights.
Second, their B of R would be far different from ours because they don't speak, carry firearms,
own property, etc., etc. You could say that they have the right not to be murdered, terrorized,
or treated cruelly. But do they have the right to be free — that is, not owned? If their
sensibilities are really like those of humans, isn't it cruel to constrain their freedom of movement,
choice of food, and mating? As a pet owner, you practice these forms of cruelty day in and
day out. Third, there's the problem of the Law of the Jungle: animals hunt animals for food,
and the strong murder the weak with extreme violence. Would you grant rights to only owned
and farmed animals but deny them to animals in the wild and the fish in the sea? That seems
pretty arbitrary, but maybe, against all reason, you want only a Bill of Rights for Owned and
Farmed Animals. That's probably it because you're undoubtedly excluding insects, worms, and simple life forms. Surely you don't want to grant rights to bacteria and viruses. You have to draw
a clear line; otherwise, you're opinions on animal rights will remain muddled.
Please give it another go.
Ken, you're right: I did miscast this whole thing as a revision of the historical document. It was a "parallel document" I had in mind, one inspired by the opening assumption of the Declaration of Independence. I was blind not to realize this.
ReplyDeleteAnd I immediately (after publishing yesterday) began thinking of the question, Independence from what? That's a more complex question in the context of animal rights, because it's not simply a question of animals' independence from something (cruel treatment at our hands, essentially), but also of humans' independence from perhaps a variety of things: our meat-eating tradition, the market power of the meat industry, perhaps even our inner demons (in contrast to the "better angels of our nature").
Morris, I'd very much like to know what your definition of "necessity" is. I have the impression that you would define it thus: "Any condition of existence whose absence would cause derangement or death." Under this definition, meat eating is certainly not a necessity, but neither is sexual intercourse, human companionship, speaking, reading, art, music, dancing, New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream, etc. Hell, laughing doesn't even make the list! If you can't define necessity in a way that includes all of the above, I'd say that you don't know what necessity is.
ReplyDeleteKen, I thought that "consider" would communicate my intended meaning for "necessity"—something that one's so used to having one thinks (wrongly) that one must have it to live. You've never heard someone say, for example, "I'd die for a cigarette"?
ReplyDeleteI agree, Morris, that the idea of "necessity" is relative, but I don't think you're saying that. I get the idea that in your philosophy there are "false necessities," and you know what they are. You'd have to, or there would be no sense in drafting a Declaration of Independence from them. And to recognize a false necessity, you'd have to know what a real one was. That brings me back to asking, What is a (real) "necessity"?
ReplyDeleteKen, I'd welcome your contribution. How would you specify a real necessity?
ReplyDeleteA "real" necessity would be one established by people of medicine — food, water, certain dietary requirements, shelter from the elements, and generous portions of love and caring. You might call theses "absolute" necessities. They are generally not what people mean when they talk of necessities. Our "necessities" in everyday life are relative to sex, culture, spiritual beliefs, and any biological or emotional imperatives that our genes and upbringing have imprinted on us. You seem to want to choose from these relative necessities and extirpate the ones you don't like. This is a very dicey business, as the Prohibition era in our history has taught us. It's a presumptuous undertaking and fraught with unintended consequences.
ReplyDeleteYou should appreciate the fact that the original Declaration of Independence was a political document. It begat law. Anyone who drafts a kindred document would imply that he would welcome compatible law.
Thank you, Ken! Helpful. In the event, I would be willing to argue for certain everyday "necessities," never of course expecting to be part of a legislative deliberation. Very dicey indeed, as was a paragraph in Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration having to do with the slave trade. Was he presumptuous for including it? Its omission fraught with unintended consequences? (The Civil War perhaps?)
ReplyDeleteSomething I feel I need to do if I intend to continue writing about animal rights is to become more familiar with the history of animal rights movements. There have been many over the past three hundred years. The most recent I'm now hearing about (as my wife listens to a recording of Andrew Bleckman's 2006 book, Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird), is various protests against "pigeon shoots." It used to be great sport to compete to see who could kill the most pigeons in a certain amount of time (sometimes several hours, depending on who was competing and what the stakes were).
Good point about slavery. The backtracking in the D of I was early evidence that a consensus didn't exist and slavery would be a permanent threat to the Union. The Civil War certainly didn't result from its omission in the D of I. In fact, we might be British subjects today if it had been included.
ReplyDeleteYour mention of pigeons is another example of the mindless cruelty that stains the history of humanity. This is what needs to be eradicated from our labor, daily routines, and entertainments.
Yes, we human animals need to be and do better. And yet one is discouraged to think that it may not make a whole lot of difference (except to a few individual animals), given the huge overpopulation of humans on the planet and global warming. I was struck that Peter Singer's long review in the NY Times Book Review of Steven Pinker's latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, ends with the sentences:
ReplyDeleteFaced with suggestions that the present relatively peaceful period is going to be blown apart by a “clash of civilizations” with Islam, by nuclear terrorism, by war with Iran or wars resulting from climate change, he gives reasons for thinking that we have a good chance of avoiding such conflicts, but no more than a good chance. If he had been able to see, before his book went to press, a study published in Nature as recently as August of this year, he might have been less sanguine about maintaining peace despite widespread climate change. Solomon Hsiang and colleagues at Columbia University used data from the past half-century to show that in tropical regions, the risk of a new civil conflict doubles during El Niño years (when temperatures are hotter than usual and there is less rainfall). If that finding is correct, then a warming world could mean the end of the relatively peaceful era in which we are now living.
Emphasis mine, by the way, in that long quotation from Singer's review. Here's a link to it: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-better-angels-of-our-nature-by-steven-pinker-book-review.html?scp=1&sq=peter%20singer%20review%20of%20steven%20pinker%20better%20angels&st=cse.
ReplyDeleteWow! You guys are doing such a great job with this and are so far over my head I have nothing to contribute. Except to say I am enjoying it and learning from it. Keep it rolling!
ReplyDeleteMotomynd, I hope that Ken enjoys your comment as much as I do (a lot).
ReplyDeleteKen, I don't think you've ever ridden a motorcycle (and perhaps not a bicycle either), but I invite you to visit Motomynd/s newly launched website—if you haven't already.
Thank you for the mention of motomynd. We won't officially launch until early 2012 but we greatly appreciate any input on the current draft. And we too have a blog. Feel free to fire away!
ReplyDeleteMo, I have ridden a motorcycle. It was in the 60's and I was a passenger. A dorm buddy at Cal owned a motorcycle, and most mornings he'd offer me a ride down the hill and into the heart of the campus. I decided then that laughing in the face of severe bodily injury and death was not my thing.
ReplyDeleteKen, my own sentiment pretty much exactly, unlike that of our daring champion, Motomynd, peace be unto him and bless his name.
ReplyDeleteHey guys, even I won't ride on the back of a bike. Are you kidding? Being a passenger in a car is bad enough, but on a bike? Forget it!
ReplyDeleteThe one thought I did have about your Declaration of Animal Rights is how about starting with an explicit rewrite of any religious dogma relating to humankind's supposed "dominion" over animals? I have heard all kinds of interpretations of this: that like most of such drivel it was created out of convenience, and that it was a mistranslation and "dominion" was supposed to mean "care for" instead of "utilize." Brutally utilize at that.
ReplyDeleteMotomynd, fifteen seconds into starting to write a different comment (which wasn't cohering, so I can't summarize what it might have been), I realized that I have already, if obliquely, "rewritten religious dogma" pertinent to this:
ReplyDeleteNew Sixth Commandment: "Treat all living creatures humanely."
Obliquely, because, of course, the original Ten Commandments didn't say anything about exercising dominion over creation. Genesis 1:26 covered it: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (King James Bible)
Most interestingly, the web page from which I copied the text gives fifteen translations parallel to the King James, and of the six that don't simply retain "have dominion," five substitute "rule," and one substitutes "reign"—no parallel translation suggests that the verse meant that man was to care for the other creatures: Man's exploitation of the rest of creation is Holy Writ.
Ah, I think I know now what my original comment was going to be. I started by saying, "Excellent suggestion, and you no doubt realize that it plays strongly to my—"
...penchant for taking religion to task for "poisoning everything," as Christopher Hitchens incisively put it in the subtitle of his 2007 book, God Is Not Great—in the United States subtitle, at any rate; in the United Kingdom, the stodgy subtitle was "The Case against Religion."
Stodgy but apt. Is there a case for religion?
There is indeed a case for religion, and understanding it should precede an effort to make a case against. (I seem to remember a Roman maxim that one should never tear down a fence before knowing why it was put up.)
ReplyDeleteI'll try to state the case for if you'll create a new blog entry for that purpose and give your thoughts on the case for. I think the topic is too significant to be buried as the 20th comment under this entry.
Ken, thanks for the suggestion, which I will act on. In the meantime (a few hours ago), I received a draft of a case for religion from Motomynd, which I asked him to prepare for publication here (in a new post) under his own byline. I want to see that first (or at least, at this moment I do). Don't go away.
ReplyDeleteActually (on quick second thought), may I ask you to do likewise? That is, draft your case so that I may post it under your byline?
I don't mean to be trying to wriggle out of stating the case myself. I may do so in a third post, or simply by commenting on his (and I hope your) statements of the case.