There’s
this incredible intersection of disciplines in this class material,
creating a complex maze of ideas whirling about in my head. I’m mostly
focusing on being present in the subject matter... much like our
experience with the snail book, but I also want to try comparing and
contrasting human and nonhuman animals while diving into others
research.
As
a student with a passion for the subject, I find myself relying more on
physical and quantitative data as evidence that we’re all so incredibly
similar, but as an advocate I feel like a picture or a story reaches so
many more like we saw in class documentaries. Learning to spread or
teach empathy is what I find myself trying to focus on as an advocate
for those most vulnerable, but where is best to begin?
I’ve
narrowed a giant conceptual framework in my head down to a handful of
academic focal points to home in on, these include; ethics, neural
biology, anthrozoology, critical animal studies, holistic ideas
surrounding pedagogy, trans-species psychology, and activism.
Phew.. deep breath.
I
keep coming back to that damn experiment in empathy though, and how we
can hypothetically go about teach others this “presence” or shared
spirit of experience, pain, fear, suffering, etc. There isn’t
(surprisingly) a lot of work being done in this subject, so much of this
research is simply collected from the exhaustive list above. How do we
develop this “guilt” Garcia talks about amongst cuyes, or learning to honor “sense of
selves” as Kirksey puts it.
Perhaps this parade of visuals we see from PETA and others might
turn more heads; helping us better imagine a beloved pet of ours,
perhaps a cat or dog in a small crate, and destined for the
slaughterhouse. Can we make this intersection personal? We've come to
love and care for these animals living alongside us, in our households,
so very much; as part of our immediate family they bring smiles, tears,
laughter and joy into our lives, and we come to know their expressions,
personalities, and mannerisms, but in this thought experiment we're now
imagining that same animal in the position a dairy cow or swine might
occupy in our food system; one of entrapment, lack of freedom, fear,
solitude, and suffering. This cat or dog, a naturally mobile, fun-loving
and active animal may live in a small enclosure so miniscule that
they're unable to turn around, they might not be able to scratch or lick
themselves naturally, they may have been ripped from their parents
hours after being born, they may never be able to enjoy the sun on their
back or the feeling of running free around a yard, they may never be
pet, hugged, cuddled, loved or shown affection. When this cat or dog
screams out in pain or fear there will be no comfort or feeling of
safety that we so willingly give in our homes, instead there are only
cold metal bars, the occasional crying of others, and the horrific stench of their own feces and urine running down
their legs every night.
Is this any sort of life we would want for our beloved pets at
home? Wouldn't we more appropriately term this form of treatment
"torture," or slavery instead of life at all?
I
think about multispecies ethnography this way, and try to dive even
deeper as Garcia did in her paper when she compares her feeling of
pregnancy and physical and emotional strife to those without voices in
the same situation. How much harder it must be for them.
The problem I see more than any is the physical barriers that exist
to distance us. Our judgement of bodies are purely that. If a human in a
vegetative or low-functioning state had a similar will of that to a
guinea pig, we'd never in our modern society deem it comparable, simply
due to it's form; we don’t necessarily see or feel an "essence" or
prerogative or will or want, only its internal being simply because it
appears so alien to us outwardly. I personally see this as ignorance on
our part, and we do it constantly. We know nothing of what it's like to
want to live, breath and experience as a guinea pig, therefore we assume
it has none of the above worth living. We assume it's needs are
inherently futile or non-existent simply because we don't try to speak
or understand guinea pig.
This lack of caring, assumption of ownership, and general
acceptance for a lack of pain, fear and suffering on the animals part
reminds me much of the human history of racial bias and enslavement of
other humans. Our speciesism toward other animals is akin to the way
sailors once saw black skin from foreign continents, or how we
misunderstood foreign language and different outward appearances from
other places in the world as “primitive,” instead of recognizing they’ve
often been in place far longer than our own cultural norms.
Historically we’ve long treated these individuals and their cultures,
livelihood, and prerogative in life as something futile, uninteresting,
unimportant, or simply non-existent outside our own elitist and
anthropocentric views of proper lifestyle choices.
The historical practice of human slavery is a very common one. We
perceive others as alien, and therefore somehow irrelevant enough to not
be worthy of equal consideration, rights, safety, equality, life,
liberty or happiness.. often times these racial barriers were enough to
equate others with not being human, but even more so; assuming the
inability to feel emotional or psychological pain... as well as
physiological. This is an important distinction, because this injustice
is still widely practiced today amongst groups of people, and we often
think of it as the utmost injustice here in Western societies. (ie: the
caste system in India, or the the sex trade of teenage girls overseas)
Much of the global north has begun to move beyond ethnic and racial
borders, however, we still treat non-human animals as commodity and
objects to be used for human use. We still refuse to generally assign
them rights. Why do we not take others lives and well-being seriously?
One
could argue that animals were and still are a means of survival to
many. There are places in the world where animal consumption is more
than just a staple means of protein and monetary livelihood, but also a
deep-seated tradition. Who is anyone to argue religious or cultural
testament? When objects, not animal “selves” are the subject, we can't
and don't push for change. It's not until we see animals as individuals
that we can begin to step in as a society and begin to provide
protections for those with no voice. Objects don't need rights, but
living breathing and opportunistic creatures who arguable want them, but
simply lack the ability to verbally express it, certainly do. Let’s try
to speak for them.
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