Apropos one of my "
new ten commandments," there'll be a referendum on animal rights in California this November. As
New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof
wrote yesterday:
Proposition 2 would ban factory farms from raising chickens, calves or hogs in small pens or cages.
Livestock rights are already enshrined in the law in Florida, Arizona, Colorado and here in Oregon, but California’s referendum would go further and would be a major gain for the animal rights movement. And it’s part of a broader trend. Burger King announced last year that it would give preference to suppliers that treat animals better, and when a hamburger empire expostulates tenderly about the living conditions of cattle, you know public attitudes are changing.
Harvard Law School now offers a course on animal rights. Spain’s Parliament has taken a first step in granting rights to apes, and Austrian activists are campaigning to have a chimpanzee declared a person. Among philosophers, a sophisticated literature of animals rights has emerged.
Kristof tells a poignant story of the Chinese white geese:
Once a month or so, we would slaughter the geese. When I was 10 years old, my job was to lock the geese in the barn and then rush and grab one. Then I would take it out and hold it by its wings on the chopping block while my Dad or someone else swung the ax.
The 150 geese knew that something dreadful was happening and would cower in a far corner of the barn, and run away in terror as I approached. Then I would grab one and carry it away as it screeched and struggled in my arms.
Very often, one goose would bravely step away from the panicked flock and walk tremulously toward me. It would be the mate of the one I had caught, male or female, and it would step right up to me, protesting pitifully. It would be frightened out of its wits, but still determined to stand with and comfort its lover.
Humans are not such special animals relative to others as most people seem to think. Ironically, many of them are abetted in the belief by one or another of their "holy books." Of course, if geese had written the Bible, "God" might be a super goose and geese the very most special of animals....
No one forbade them to write a Bible, or any other book, for that matter. Perhaps humans are a bit special.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, the vignette is indeed poignant.
The August 2008 issue of Awake reports briefly on the work of Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon. Specifically, the adoption of Pichou, a baby gorilla whose mother was killed by hunters. ("When a Baby Gorilla Cried") I was hoping it was online, but alas, no.
"Seeing the activities at the center," writes Awake, "can help a visitor understand the moral responsibility that God imposed on humans when he instructed the first couple to have the earth and its animals in subjection."
Awake is published by people who do their best to represent a certain "holy book."
Tom, I so value the communication that you and I have. While I regret the occasions when emotions have caused a bit of unpleasantness, I think those times have now passed.
ReplyDeleteWhat I value about our communication (beyond our acquaintance itself) is that it so clearly illustrates that people's fundamental belief or world view rules and determines what they will entertain as possible.
In the present interchange, I imply that "God" is a figment of the animal that is capable of imagining it (and does imagine it). You of course accept God as an undeniable given and hold that man is not just another animal.
I am very comfortable with the evolutionary biologist's hypothesis that everything about us humans developed over the course of many millennia, our minds, our tendency to religion, etc., etc. I believe in it as a true hypothesis worth following as a guide to exploration and discovery.
You treat it (I don't mean to be stating your position and may not characterize is perfectly) as a mistake. Humans don't "tend to religion" because they evolved to do so, but rather "God" spoke and wise humans listened.
The reason I think that emotional unpleasantness may be behind us now is that I see this divergence very clearly now and accept that that is just the way it is. Nothing that either of us can adduce to the other (you from the Bible or from Watch Tower, or whatever, me from the latest that I might have read from Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, David Buss, or whomever) will make any difference.
Yet, there's still the acquaintance! I appreciate you, and I appreciate that you give me the sense that you appreciate me.
Good on you, Tom Sheepandgoats!