A n i m a l W r i t
e s © sm
The official ANIMAL
RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Publisher ~ EnglandGal@aol.com
Issue # 10/20/02
Editor ~ JJswans@aol.com
Journalists ~ ParkStRanger@aol.com
~
MichelleRivera1@aol.com
~ sbest1@elp.rr.com
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:
1 ~ Animals Like Us: The Search for a Species Identity
By Dr. Steven Best
2 ~ Collateral Damage By Robert Cohen
3 ~ Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers and BFC Release Native Wildlife
Video
Compilation
4 ~ Bessy What happened To You?
5 ~ Memorable Quote
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~1~
Animals Like Us:
The Search for a Species Identity
By Dr. Steven Best - sbest1@elp.rr.com
"The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret. I have come to
believe
that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its
full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not
limit itself to mankind." ~ Dr. Albert Schweitzer
Animals
have always been central to human lives, in the best and worst ways. To begin
with the obvious, we are animals and so we exist in a continuum with the
nonhuman animals who are our evolutionary ancestors. We share physiology,
genetics, and key behaviors; arguably, fundamental aspects of our ethics and
family structures come from primates. So we are of the animals, not above them
as presumed by the Western psychosis.
Throughout history, animals have been key to human beings not only as resources
for food or clothing, but also religiously, spiritually, and philosophically.
Animals are crucial figures in human mythologies: they are the stuff of
animistic conceptions of the universe, Gods and Goddesses, totemic icons, and
spirit guides. On the whole, they have brought the cosmos alive and made the
earth something less than a barren, lonely planet. The existential solitude of
humans on the earth without animal companions is one of the fascinating themes
explored in Philip K Dick’s sci-fi novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? (which very loosely was the basis for the screenplay for the
1982 film Blade Runner). Thoreau’s statement, “In wilderness is the
preservation of the world,” should be understood not only in the literal sense
of maintaining the natural world and its life forms from being devoured by
technocapitalism, but also in the philosophical sense that our humanity depends
on sustaining an intimate relationship with nature.
"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.
Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
~ Pythagoras
In areas of the world such as India, of course, animals still have spiritual
significance, and Eastern religions do not sharply separate human and nonhuman
animals. But the historically dominant interpretation of the Christian religion
has constructed an ontological cleavage, and in the Western world animals have
been treated mainly as objects of exploitation, profit-making, and even targets
upon which to release pathological forms of hatred and aggression, making
cruelty a magnifier of human identity. Thus, we have related to animals
primarily in two ways: as sacred beings akin to us and as instrumental
resources apart from us.
Because of a long history of speciesism and capitalism, I hazard to guess that
most people in the Western world today have no caring or spiritual – in the
best pagan sense of that term to mean connectedness and respect -- relation
with animals or nature as a whole. Instrumental outlooks frame the view of the
world, such that trees are timber, cows are hamburgers, and dogs are security
systems tied to a backyard chain.
But when human beings replace a caring relationship to animals with an
exploitative relationship, they too suffer, more than they ever realize. As a
consequence of animal slaughter and abuse, human beings bring more violence
into their families and communities; their health deteriorates; and they
severely degrade the natural environmental -- squandering valuable resources
such as food, water, and land in a grossly inefficient system of food
production; destroying grasslands, riverbeds, and rainforests; polluting water
systems; and heating up the planet through global warming.
But more happens. Human beings become morally impaired and spiritually
handicapped. They need animals and the natural world for their psychological
growth. Ecological philosopher Paul Shepard has explored the importance of the
relation of between human with nonhuman life. He claims that concrete
relationships with animals were crucial for the healthy psychological
development of human beings as individuals and as a species. In works such as The
Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, Shepard argues provocatively that
as a consequence of human alienation from animals, a breach that began ten
thousand years ago with the decline of hunting and gathering society and the
emergence of agricultural society, human psychological growth became severely
retarded, and the “ontogeny” of infant development no longer recapitulates the
“phylogeny” of species evolution.
For Shepard, “the human mind needs [wild animals and plants in their natural
habitats] in order to develop and work. Human intelligence is bound to the
presence of animals.” Instead, humanist ideologies arrogantly presume order and
meaning are generated through history alone and define “progress” as
proportional to the extent humanity untangles itself from the chaos of nature
to create the empires of culture. Humans clearly have their own trajectory, but
the only successful way to negotiate their identities is through a complex
interplay with the “otherness” of animals. One of the most crucial failures of
modern “education” and of psychological understanding itself is to recognize
the need to ritually bond with wild nature during childhood and adolescence.
The consequences of this skewed development unfold throughout the general
landscape of human insanity.
"But if you have no relationship with the living things on this
earth, you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity."
~ Krishnamurti
One need not embrace Shepard’s atavistic call to return to the primitive past
or his romanticization of hunting and gathering to probe his main question:
What happens to the human psyche when people oppress and abuse animals? Among
other things, human beings block channels of love and empathy, they inhibit
capacities for care and compassion, and they thwart greater sources of
identification that bring spiritual awakening and growth.
Human beings can survive without caring relations, but they cannot flourish.
Humanity needs to give and to receive love and recognition. The fundamental
quest in every human life not fixated on survival is for love and wholeness.
Human beings cannot attain this through separation and alienation, and they
must learn that their spiritual quest ultimately must be deepened beyond the
human species into a connectedness with nonhuman animals and the natural world.
For harmony with other humans in conditions of alienation from the natural
world still leaves a huge existential vacuum and a looming socio-environmental
catastrophe.
Consider for a moment how animals add immeasurable value to one’s life. I
myself have 11 cats, and each one gives me a unique gift every day, a smile and
subtle joy well worth the destruction they wreak on my furniture. It is worth
pondering whether one can think of a time in one’s life when learning, healing,
growth, or awareness came through the assistance of an animal rather than a
human. Two years ago, filmmakers James LaVeck and Jenny Stein made a powerful
documentary film, The Witness, which shows how a Bronx
construction worker named Eddie Lama underwent a spiritual transformation
through the gift of love given to him by a cat. The same experience happened to
the late animal rights activist Henry Spira, prompting his shift from a human
rights to an animal rights activist. Significantly, both men loathed cats
before a particular individual feline won their hearts and transformed their
consciousness.
In this case, as happens so often, the “angel of grace” came in the form of a
whiskered being, not a God or human sage. But lest we conclude that the lessons
come only from the beings our society privileges – cats and dogs – writers like
Karen Davis and Lorri Bauston remind us that farmed animals like chickens,
sheep, pigs, and cattle – arbitrarily positioned outside the boundary of moral
and legal concerns – are every bit as much complex individuals who can touch
and transform our lives, and these authors tell profound stories indeed of
their encounters with wonderful winged or hoofed beings.
“Animals of the planet are in desperate peril. Without free animal life
I believe we lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.”
~ Alice Walker
Animals
can play various crucial roles in our lives, including being profound teachers
and healers. We think we teach animals things, but we forget the most important
thing is what they teach us, if we allow them. Animals can teach us patience,
happiness, courage, simple joys, and love – unconditional love. When we learn
to love beyond the human barrier, when we grasp our fundamental similarities
with nonhuman animals, we become aware of the deep unity of all life. This
realization is the basis for a profound awakening and it is exhilarating in its
liberation from the psychosis of dualism. The enlightenment of Buddha involved
precisely his intuitive grasp of the unity of life, and that the suffering of
all living beings merited our compassion.
The teaching we receive from animals is also a healing. It is well-known that
they can reach violent, autistic, or asocial children in a way humans cannot;
that having companion animals helps to lower stress and blood pressure and
elevate levels of happiness; that animals can speed healing in the sick and
make the difference between life and death in the elderly.
Most importantly, animals can heal our broken connections to nature. As science
shows, reality is whole, not broken; separation is not the true mode of being
or a sustainable or viable existence. In one sense, connection to animals is
more important than connection to human beings, because animals bring us closer
to the natural world. We can never experience true wholeness and the
interconnectedness of life until we transcend the limitations of our species
boundaries and grasp our fundamental interconnectedness with other beings and
the whole of nature. The awakening to connectedness and compassion is central
to moral and spiritual development because it takes us beyond the prison of the
Ego and even species perspective into a larger realm of life and
identification. Compassion is a way of knowing unmediated by distinctions of
any kind.
"Where there is disharmony in the world, death follows." ~
Ancient Navajo saying
We
might someday attain Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “worldhouse,” a
global community of peace and justice. But until we radically alter our
relations to our nonhuman companions in the journey of evolution, King’s
worldhouse will remain a vast, bloody slaughterhouse operated by a stunted and
violent humanity. King’s dream would be a nightmare, not only for the tens of
billions of animals butchered each year for gluttonous human consumption
(certainly in the advanced sectors of the globe organized around fast food
empires), but also for the human world itself, as it remains plagued by a vast
array of social and environmental problems that perplex and bewilder the minds
stranded in myopic humanist paradigms wherein the importance of nonhuman nature
for human social life remains a mystery.
Animals are central to the solution to the riddle of human history, to its
evolutionary trajectory, overall coherence, and ultimate possibilities. The
future of this history depends not only on the rejection of global capitalism
in favor of planetary justice, but also on the emergence of a new sensibility
that devolves around animal rights, environmental ethics, and reverence for
life. Instead of embarking on the current disastrous project of remaking nature
through genetic engineering, we ought to be developing the far more sane and
profound goal of remaking ourselves, in a fashion that restores the connection
between humanity and humility, between economy and ecology, between the laws of
society and the “laws” of nature.
“More humility is needed in our perspective. The combination of
species rarity and individuality based on a highly specialized life cycle and
exceedingly complex brain is new and dangerous and may not succeed; indeed its
extinction is already threatening.” ~ Paul Shepard
This view is not opposed to technological intervention, only to the methods and
mentalities that fail to promote the harmonization of the natural and social
worlds. Besides, our interference with living processes has been so great that
to simply stop now would abrogate our need to restore and repair the damage,
such as through replanting the forests and reintroducing wolves to the wild. In
a world of global warming, rainforest destruction, massive species extinction,
and hyper-barbarism, the animals need us as much as we need them. But where
interspecies dynamics are breaking down under the impact of driftnets, steel
traps, gunfire, bulldozers, and knives and forks, our identities and very
existence grows more precarious with each passing day.
Dr.
Steven Best
http://utminers.utep.edu/best/
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~2~
Collateral Damage
By Robert Cohen - i4crob@earthlink.net
http://www.notmilk.com
I
was recently challenged to justify my consumption of rice. After all, I
am told, the process of harvesting rice (growing in water) kills untold numbers
of frogs, turtles, and fish. As a vegan who cares about animal rights issues,
people sometimes create the most unusual of scenarios to question my choice not
to eat animals. One angry individual recently asked during the question and
answer period of a lecture at a major university:
"If you were in a rowboat, and came upon a drowning baby and a drowning
dog, which one would you rescue?" (Every animal rights speaker who I know
has been challenged by a variation of the same question.)
I responded: "That happens to me two or three times each summer."
(Usually, at this point, the audience laughs at the absurdity of such a
question). I continue. "I usually jump into the water, disabling the
crocodile by tickling that soft spot between his eyes (try that next
time...puts them right to sleep), and feeding the great white shark a few of my
waterproof 'people cookies' which I keep concealed in a secret pouch in my
bathing suit, just for such emergencies. I then rescue the baby first
while the dog does the dog paddle, then I grab the dog by the nape of its neck
by my teeth while swimming to shore. Of course, by that time the local fire
department has usually responded with their rescue team. I hand off the dog and
child, brush the firefighters aside, enter the first burning building that I
find, and carry out the elderly couple that has been overcome by fumes.
Occasionally, the heart of one of the two stops beating, so that I have to ride
along in the ambulance keeping the victim alive with heart massage and mouth to
mouth resuscitation. A few times, my surgical skills have come to good use, and
although I do not look forward to performing angioplasty alone, I do what has
to be done. Saving lives is a full time job for me."
Where were we? Oh, yes, rice threshers. Imagine how much noise a 70,000 pound
rice thresher makes in a water-filled paddy? I'll get to that in a few moments,
but imagine this: No frog in his or her good sense would stick around long
enough to find out what all the ruckus was about. Kermit and company, seeking
to keep their legs intact and off of somebody's dinner plate, would hop or swim
away. Hopefully.
No, I would not dive into the path of the maniacal driver of a rice thresher to
rescue a deaf frog. Hard of hearing amphibians mate and create more hard of
hearing frogs. We've got a classic survival of the fittest scenario. The strong
survive, or so Darwin claimed.
My choice is not to eat animals. I do my best to exercise that choice by not
wearing their skin on my body, and I do not eat them.
I am aware that birds and bees sometimes die during the harvesting of apples.
So do human apple pickers. Nobody has yet accused me of being a cannibal or
murderer because of an occasional death in the orchard, although I may have to
deal with that eventuality one day. In the meantime, I will continue to eat
apples.
I do my best, but some people have justifiably accused me of being without
compassion. After all, I eat bananas, despite the fact that some banana pickers
in South America are abused. I eat grapes too, despite the fact that migrant
workers would most certainly live in mansions, if not for my gluttony. I draw
the line at chocolate. We all have our limits, and my conscience does not allow
me to eat chocolate grown in Ivory Coast, where children are kidnapped and live
in slavery on chocolate plantations. At least migrant workers get paid
something, and have the ability to migrate.
I will also continue to eat rice, even the wildest of species.
I grow many of my own fruits and vegetables. It is mid-October, and I have
plenty of spinach and four varieties of lettuce still growing in my garden. I
use no pesticides, and sometimes find a bug in my salad. I do not intentionally
eat bugs, but there must be an occasional bug on my food, in my mouth, and in
my stomach. I do not do it intentionally, honest, although I understand that
they are a good source of protein and Vitamin B-12. Elizabeth asks,
"Daddy, what's worse than finding a worm in your apple." I respond,
"A half a worm, Lizzy."
Vegans get their B-12 by eating organically grown pesticide-free produce. After
all, B-12 comes from bacteria. The average human female carries nine pounds of
bacteria on her skin or within her intestines.
There are no perfect vegans. There are only people living their lives as
compassionately as possible, living true to their values by not intentionally
bringing pain to other animals. Vegans do not buy products from companies
performing tests on animals. Vegans do not wear leather shoes or buy
crocodile-skin backpacks. Super-vegans do not sit on toadstools.
If ever I hear that the driver or operator of a rice thresher takes pleasure in
veering erratically out of his way in order to run over frogs and fish, that
might be the last time I eat rice. I doubt that occurs. Instances of small
wildlife and bugs killed during the processing of my food are accidental, and I
feel bad for the living creatures who die so that I am fed.
The defining line between their deaths and the deaths of farm animals used to
feed meat eaters is that the occasions of their accidents, like the drowning
dog and child, are the exceptional rarity and not the rule. Eating a dog in
Korea or a cat in China or a piglet in the United States represents what is
essentially the same act of death and violence, and such actions are
intentional and volitional choices made by individuals who have compassionate
food choice alternatives.
OK. So, now that we've had a bit of fun answering questions about rice
harvests, I've saved my final thoughts for those dimwits who ask the question,
having no knowledge of rice harvesting.
Rice plants cannot possibly survive unless proper irrigation management
techniques are applied. Most of America's rice is grown in Arkansas and
California. The rice plant goes through many cycles, and requires plenty of
water. When harvesting time comes, getting the water off of a field at the
proper time is as critically important as flooding the rice paddy during growth
stages. In other words, the rice is harvested in dry fields. Experienced rice
farmers know the proper time to drain fields. There are no frogs or fish in
rice fields. The myth of Kermit's pureed brothers, sisters, and tadpoles is an
urban legend that vegans need not have to defend.
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~3~
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers and BFC
Release Native Wildlife Video Compilation
From Stop-the-Slaughter@vortex.wildrockies.org
http://www.wildrockies.org/Buffalo
"Why
We Exist" is a half hour tour in the field with Buffalo Field Campaign
volunteers and their allies working on the frontlines to protect Yellowstone's
wild buffalo herd. (28:45)
Plan B, The Buffalo's Alternative contains information on a scientific,
biologically based plan to allow buffalo to roam freely throughout the
Yellowstone ecosystem. (6:35)
Buffalo Bull is a documentary of the controversy surrounding the capturing and
killing of America's last wild free roaming herd of buffalo. The video combines
footage shot in the field over the past ten years with interviews with local
residents, politicians, activists, spiritual leaders, and government officials.
(50:15)
Little Buffalo is a moving music video created by Michael Mease and Folk Singer
Bryan Flaig. (4:00)
Wild Bison PSA two, 30-second public service announcements for wild bison.
(1:00)
ROAM is a video created by Buffalo Field Campaign volunteers for young kids who
love buffalo. (12:05)
The Big Bad Wolf In the early 1990's the Yukon government initiated a slaughter
of wild wolves at the behest of trophy hunters who view the wolves as
competitors for big-game caribou. This video is an international plea from
Friends of the Wolf to let the wolves live wild and free. (10:30)
A Future for the Grizzly? Each year in British Columbia as many as 700
grizzlies are killed. The government has yet to conduct a scientific
population study of the grizzly who may number as few as 3,000. The Great
Bear is losing habitat to logging, mining, oil and gas drilling, road building,
human habitation, and their lives to trophy hunters and illegal poachers
alike. First Nations, biologists, and activists speak to the question: Is
there a future for the grizzly bear? (21:05)
Ordering Info - For a copy of our Native Wildlife compilation video, we ask
that you send a sliding fee donation of $15-$35 based on your ability to pay.
Your donation allows Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers to continue offering
environmental and human rights videos to the public, and to provide free videos
for educators, students and elders. Your donation is tax-deductible to the
extent allowed by law.
Send checks to: CMCR POB 7941 Missoula, MT 59807 Buffalo Field Campaign
Programs POB 957 West Yellowstone, Montana 59758
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~4~
Bessy What happened To You?
From chalissa1@aol.com
A few centuries ago
Particularly under the Eastern skies
She grazed peacefully under the sun.
Frolicked in the village pond
Walked 3 to 4 miles every day
Had her fill of grasses
Provided milk - nourishment
For the ones that took care of her!
Saved from slaughter
Written into the scriptures
Forbidden!
Died natural death.
After death she benefited the human race with leather & buttons
Carrion usually feasted on the remains!
Modern day Bessy's plight
They don't teach compassion & humanity in MBA courses!
Bessy has no feelings
No needs
Is inanimate
Goal maximize $$$$'s
Compassion be damned !
Confined to a stall
In a barn away from sunlight
Excreta - polluta stench unbearable
Who cares!
Concrete floors - goes lame
So what - kill it!
Tail flops around
in the manure & urine
into milking apparatus.
Chop it off!
Wait! too much effort
No anesthesia just bind it
Shuts off blood supply
Painfully falls off!
Hey day for flies!!
No more prairie grass for Bessie
Mix soya bran with Chicken manure!!
Yes Chicken manure!!
She's hungry will eat it
Put lots & lots of Antibiotics
Environment is unclean you know!
We'll lose money if she gets sick!
& Yes give it the bovine growth hormone!
Jacks up milk supply unnaturally
100 pounds per day instead of 25 that God had planned!
For the calf
But humans,
we can steal
So what!
The cows udders are not meant to process so much milk!
Mastitis & other diseases set in
Pus forms, very painful for the cow! Meets regulation - ship it!
Who cares the milk spigots are open
Money is rolling in!! That's all that matters!
We have clout says Biznusfarmer! Worry not about clean air Act
Putting up 4000 herd dairy farm!
suckers in Peoria
know not
19 acres of open cesspool - open air excreta- renamed
" Lagoon"
Flies & vermin enter local water table all kinds of pathogens !
So what, who cares
Green backs come!! Come!! But yes!!
Ah! There's more money yet to be made!!
Bessy has a womb!
Lined with more greenbacks
Keep her constantly pregnant!
Calf given 1 hour to three days to suckle!!
Male calf separated
veal crate, fed gruel,
no iron, kept in the dark suffering from constant diarrhea
grows sickly
Eventually sees the sun en-route to the slaughterhouse
Served as veal - connoisseurs enjoy the white delicacy
With its aura of pain!
Female into the main stream, dairy cow,
produce 4 calves & the fifth year milk production declines - goes to
Slaughter
Bessy's fate Finite probability will get dismembered live or bled alive -
scripted by elders
Served as hamburger at the lunch counter!
Bessy
WHAT did you do?
To deserve this??
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~5~
Memorable Quote
"Man [has] always assumed that he was more
intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much-the wheel, New York,
wars and so on-while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water
having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that
they were far more intelligent than man-for precisely the same reason." --
Douglas Adams
«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»
Susan Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Animal Rights Online
P O Box 7053
Tampa, Fl 33673-7053
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1395/
-=Animal Rights Online=-
&
Advisory Board Member, Animal Rights Network Inc.,
not-for-profit publisher of The Animals' Agenda Magazine
http://www.animalsagenda.org/
The
Animals' Agenda Magazine: WebEdition
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