Lend me your ear

Back in India, when we were kids, towards the end of one school year, a puppy wandered into our compound and made himself home there.  We kids loved the sight of a puppy, of course.  The traditional, and orthodox, household we were, the puppy had to remain outside.  Mother gave him food and he was happy.  Once, when she gave him something to eat, the fellow--as small as he was--scratched the dirt and tried to bury the food for later, which amused me to no extent.

A few days later, it was time for us kids to head to grandma's village for the summer break.  We packed the bags into the car, which my parents sold soon after the oil shock of the early 1970s.  The car started rolling out of the compound on to the road.  The puppy darted after. The car picked up speed, and the puppy tried to keep up but could not.  It was an emotional moment.

When we returned to get back to school, there was no puppy.  The gut-wrenching emotion is why I remember that even after all these years.

Much later in life, here in America, life was with dogs at home.  There was no doubt about which of the two was the awesomely lovable fellow--he seemed to lack even one mean muscle in his small body.  As awesome as he was, I always regretted that the owners of his mother had docked his tail even when he was a mere few weeks old pup.

I do not understand the fascination with docking dogs' tails or cropping their ears.  How awful!  Dog breeders and owners continue with this cruelty because, well, there is no real law against it, even though the animal health professionals oppose these practices:

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) oppose these procedures, with the AVMA stating that these procedures "are not medically indicated nor of benefit to the patient," and "these procedures cause pain and distress, and, as with all surgical procedures, are accompanied by inherent risks of anesthesia, blood loss, and infection."  

At least some countries are sensible enough: "cosmetic tail-docking is banned throughout Australia and in numerous parts of Europe."  Here in the US?

As of 2014, only two states, Maryland and Pennsylvania, have any restrictions on tail-docking, focusing on the dog’s age at the time of surgery and the use of anesthesia. Only nine states regulate ear cropping. 

You don't even had to have enjoyed the company of a dog for you to visualize a happy dog wagging its tail, right?  But, when its tail is docked?

Numerous studies find that tails are (gasp) useful and meaningful in dog-dog communication (more formally known as intraspecific communication, or communication between members of the same species). Even Charles Darwin recognized that tail up has a different meaning than tail down, and dogs attend to long tails better than short ones. The side of the body that a tail wags can even be informative to another dog: a dog seen wagging more to his right-side would be perceived more positively than a dog wagging more to his left. A stump is less informative. 

Imagine doing anything similar to a fellow human!  Animal rights is not merely about killing them for food or for sport.  Animal rights extend to such aspects too.

Since 2008, the American Veterinary Medical Association has encouraged “the elimination of ear cropping and tail docking from breed standards.” Who is going to stand with them?

It is a mad, mad, mad, world!

The market and the inhumane economy

Years ago, when I was teaching at Bakersfield, the university invited the philosopher Peter Singer to give a public talk.  The community, of whom a significant percentage is uber-conservative, made it clear that there would be protests because of Singer's controversial stands.  Anticipating a huge turnout, the event was not held in the small auditorium but was instead moved to the basketball court.  And, the police were there in numbers.

Since then, every once in a while I have come across Singer's essays and have always found them to be thought-provoking, even if I didn't always agree with him.  In the New York Review of Books, Singer has reviewed The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals.  Well, it is not really a review essay because he spends way more time talking about his own ideas and works more than the book that is under review; nonetheless, it is an essay that is full of interesting and challenging ideas and facts about rights of animals, especially the ones who are farmed for human consumption.

Singer's concern is about the animal-derived foods that we humans consume in greater and greater amounts:

consumers buy factory-farmed animal products, either despite knowing what factory farming is like for the animals they eat, or without even asking what it is like.

Don't jump up to blame capitalism, he writes:

Speciesism, which leaves so many of us indifferent to the interests of animals, predates capitalism. It survives revolutions that lead to alternative economic systems, whether they be the state communism of the former Soviet Union or the more idealistic socialism of the Israeli kibbutzim.

As long as we consider other life forms inferior to humans, well, we kill them and eat, or confine them in cages before we will them.  In short, we don't treat them as life forms.  One of the many issues Singer discusses there is this:

The problems of chicken production are not simply due to the fact that the birds are raised in vast crowded sheds, in air reeking of ammonia from their accumulated droppings. The more fundamental problem is that today’s chickens have been bred to grow three times as fast as chickens raised in the 1950s. Now they are ready for market when they are just six weeks old and their immature legs cannot handle the weight they gain. As a result, according to Webster, about one third of them are in chronic pain for the last third of their lives.
Given there are eight billion chickens raised for meat in the US every year, that means 2.6 billion birds are experiencing chronic pain for the last two weeks of their lives. Industry reports and scientific journals provide evidence that each year 139 million chickens don’t even make it to slaughter. Their legs collapse under them and, unable to move or reach food and water, they die of thirst or they starve. Or they simply cannot cope with the conditions they are living in, and their hearts give out. Or they die from the stress of being rounded up, thrown into cages, and transported to the slaughterhouses. In one way or another, they suffer to death.⁶ The humane economy has yet to have an impact on this huge industry and the unimaginable quantity of suffering it creates.

If one thinks, believes, that animals like chicken do not have any rights, and that humans can (ab)use them in any form, then there is no place for discussions.  I would think that such a group will be in the minority.  A good chunk of the population will feel uncomfortable when faced with the tortures that chicken are put through.

Do Americans care less about animals? The Californian experience suggests they do not. When Californian voters were given the opportunity to express their views on whether it should be permissible to prevent farm animals from turning around or stretching their limbs, they overwhelmingly said no. (This was the year in which Barack Obama was first elected president, and California was one of his strongest states, yet more Californians voted to give freedom of movement to farm animals [63 percent] than voted for Obama [61 percent]).

Will science and technology, along with philanthropists and citizens, deliver a humane economy?

No wonder Tolstoy became a vegetarian! Will Pope Francis become one?

Last night, I started reading Tolstoy's Confession.  He writes in this highly praised translated version:

My loss of faith happened in me as it happened then and does now among people with our kind of upbringing.  In the majority of cases I think it happens like this: people live as all other people do, and they all live on the basis of principles which not only have nothing in common with Christian teaching but also for the most part are in opposition to it; Christian teaching plays no part in life; one never comes across it in one's relations with others and one never has to deal with it in one's own life; Christian teaching is professed somewhere out there, far from life and independently of it.

I was like, damn that is so right!  My loss of faith began that way, the difference being that it was "Hindu" in place of Christian and "Hinduism" in place of Christianity.

Tolstoy then goes for the jugular:

Then as now the open declaration and profession of Orthodoxy were found for the most part in stupid, cruel, and immoral people who think themselves very important.  Intelligence, honesty, uprightness, goodness of heart, and morality were found for the most part in people declaring themselves to be unbelievers.

Ouch!  It does not surprise me anymore that Tolstoy was excommunicated from the church.

I began to read a great deal and to think very early on, so my rejection of Christian teaching became a conscious one very early on.  From the age of sixteen I stopped saying my prayers and of my own volition stopped going to church and fasting. 

Right from a young age, I had a very difficult time reconciling the wonderful ideals that the religion advocated with the reality of every day life lived by the believers.  I am immensely happy to find that I am walking along the trails that Tolstoy (and others) have cleared for me:

Religions and religious leaders have always had profound ideals for all of us.  But, we humans seem to intentionally choose to ignore them.  Thus, Christians have plundered and killed as much as Buddhists have plundered and killed, even though the founders of both the faiths championed peace and love.

In his latest op-ed, the philosopher Peter Singer tackles one of those aspects of Christian--specifically Roman Catholic--teachings: "man's dominion."  Singer writes:

Mainstream Christian thinking about animals is rooted in the Book of Genesis,where God is said to have granted man dominion over all the animals. St. Thomas Aquinas interpreted that verse as implying that it simply does not matter how man behaves toward animals; the only reason why we should not inflict whatever cruelties we like on animals is that doing so may lead to cruelty to humans.
A few Christian thinkers have sought to reinterpret “dominion” as “stewardship,” suggesting that God entrusted humanity to care for his creation. But it remained a minority view, favored by environmentalists and animal protectionists, and Aquinas’s interpretation remained the prevailing Catholic doctrine until the late twentieth century.

Tolstoy wrote that "Christian teaching is professed somewhere out there, far from life and independently of it."  Singer points out that what that teaching is has been interpreted in many ways.  The latest interpretation is from the current Pope:

Francis has now come down decisively against the mainstream view, saying that Christians “have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures,” and insisting that “we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.” Our “dominion” over the universe, he declares, should be understood “in the sense of responsible stewardship.”
Against the background of nearly 2,000 years of Catholic thinking about “man’s dominion,” this is a revolutionary change.

How did Tolstoy deal with his own views?  Were they always the same?  Did they change?

I continued to live only professing my belief in progress.  "Everything is evolving and I am evolving, and why I am evolving together with everyone else will be made clear."  That was how I then had to formulate my faith.

In this evolving faith, Francis has gone one more step, Singer writes:

Now, in Laudatio Si, Francis quotes the passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus says of the birds that “not one of them is forgotten before God.” Francis then asks: “How then can we possibly mistreat them or cause them harm?” It is a good question, because we do mistreat them, and on a massive scale.
Most Roman Catholics participate in this mistreatment, a few by raising chickens, ducks, and turkeys in ways that maximize profit by reducing animal welfare, and the majority by buying the products of factory farms. If Pope Francis can change that, he will, in my view, have done more good than any other pope in recent history.

This summer of deep reading is turning out to be wonderfully rewarding.  Life is beautiful, indeed!

At least on Earth Day ask forgiveness and feel sorry?

My neighbor has always made fun of me, whenever he finds me sweeping away the cobwebs around my home.  "You don't have to do it if you spray the chemicals I use" he reminds me and jokes that I am one of those who doesn't want to kill even spiders.

Which is true.  I don't want to kill spiders or ants or anything unless they directly interfere with my life.  I don't want to see ants in my kitchen, but I don't care if they are having a party on the sidewalk outside my home.  I don't like to see spiders or flies or gnats inside my home.  When I do see them inside, well, I do kill them.  But I feel bad for them.  I feel guilty when I crush those tiny critters. Sometimes I even apologize to them, as if that makes any difference to the ant!

I am no tree-hugging nutcase to whom environmentalism is a religion, and I routinely make fun of the Earth Day rhetoric, But, I care for, and worry about, the natural environment--the living and inanimate--because of a deep conviction that the cosmos is not merely about us humans and our own comfortable material existence.  My sincere belief that there is nothing for me after the remaining twenty-four years of my life does not mean that I am going to trash this place while I am here.

Source

This being the Earth Day time, my various news feeds feature writings on many aspects of our existence on this glorious pale blue dot.  In one, the author reflects on a part of his life in which he was an animal experimenter:

First, I had to learn how to shock a pigeon. A graduate student demonstrated how one person held the pigeon upside down while the other plucked out the feathers in back of its legs, cut two lengths of stiff stainless steel wire from a spool and pushed them through the skin and under the pelvic bones. The wires were then soldered to a harness placed on the pigeon’s back. The harness contained a plug that would be connected to a source of electric shock during experiments. No anesthetic or sedative was used.
One day, while programming an experiment, I accidentally touched the electrodes and got a jolting shock that numbed my entire arm. I was amazed that, according to my professor, the shock level was the correct one to use for pigeons. I told myself that pigeons must not feel pain as much as I did

We tell ourselves all kinds of things in order to keep doing those things over and over.  

I was told that everyone had to take a turn killing the pigeons after the experiments were finished. A graduate student showed me how to dump a couple of dozen birds into a clear plastic garbage bag, then pour a splash of chloroform on them and tie the bag shut. I remember the first and only time I did the killing

I would imagine that except a minority, most of us would get messed up beyond repair if we conducted experiments on animals.  Especially if we did that more than once.  I would think we would forever be haunted by the images and the sounds.  

As I look back on this nearly 50 years later, I am astonished that the daily grind of depriving, shocking and killing these animals did not move me to leave my job. My rationalization is that I was a student and young worker in institutions of higher learning, programmed to receive the wisdom of academia. I was studying how the science that supposedly advanced our civilization was done. Speaking of his infamous experiments in which human subjects followed orders thinking they were giving extremely painful shocks to other humans, the Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram said, “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.” I think that describes me pretty well.

Even when I kill ants and spiders that come into my home, I make sure I kill them as fast as I can.  I don't want those critters to suffer.  Yet, experiments on animals is nothing but watching them suffer.  If from those experiments we derive some life-extending benefits to humans, are our additional years worth all that suffering we put the animals to?

I sat with a small notepad writing the alien’s speech as my thoughts drifted back to my days in punishment research. The words flowed in almost final form as I drew on my own rationalizations for my acts of animal torture. Tears welled up in my eyes as I wrote: “We now recognize that you, too, are a sacred life-form. We deeply regret what we have done. We ask forgiveness. We are sorry.”

I don't ever get trapped into the Earth Day rhetoric of "save the planet."  As George Carlin joked, the planet knows how to take care of itself.  The planet will easily shake us humans off--a volcanic eruption alone can knock us out.  Instead, it is the every day life (and death) issues, starting from how we treat the ants and the spiders and the pigeons and the pigs, that Earth Day should be about.  And for those, we need to think of every single day as Earth Day.  But, that's not how we humans will do it, and neither will we ask forgiveness and feel sorry :(