[1]Speciesism, or, Humanocentrism is the centric view that only human beings are of moral significance. Theoretically, then, any concern or compassion we might have have for non-human beings results in taking away moral concern for animals in favor of human interests. For example, if we help animals by rejecting practices of experimentation, testing, eating them and even torturing animals for our own entertainment, then by doing so, we take away moral concern from animals in favor of people. . . . So in summary, humanocentrists reject animal welfare in favor of human welfare. Below we see the rejection of animal welfare, along with the abandonment of their ethical treatment, in favor of human welfare. Warning: What you are about to see may be graphic.
[2]
[2]
A sociologist might call it dominating nature to acquire human needs or wants. An economist, might call it meeting a demand or certain wants, which are only limited by human imagination and our ability to acquire or achieve those wants. In other words, we have nearly a limitless amount of power over nature. And, if it so happens to meet out desires, we can take from it nearly as much as we want. We engineer, market and finance the production of animals to the point that we have specialized divisions of labor to fulfill human needs, which are interdependent on delicate eco-systems, as well as political and economic infrastructures. A lot can go wrong within these delicate ecosystems and infrastructures.
[2]
[2]
A sociologist might call it dominating nature to acquire human needs or wants. An economist, might call it meeting a demand or certain wants, which are only limited by human imagination and our ability to acquire or achieve those wants. In other words, we have nearly a limitless amount of power over nature. And, if it so happens to meet out desires, we can take from it nearly as much as we want. We engineer, market and finance the production of animals to the point that we have specialized divisions of labor to fulfill human needs, which are interdependent on delicate eco-systems, as well as political and economic infrastructures. A lot can go wrong within these delicate ecosystems and infrastructures.
As a result, we humans become incredibly vulnerable and potentially less self-sufficient or "sustainable". Ironically, the system set up to sustain us also poses serious vulnerability due to potential for contamination and food borne diseases that can spread. Within the interdependency of the mass food industry, its fragile infrastructure (from the labor force to the animals produced and sold at the cost of their own suffering) lurks a danger. This danger conceivably causes a greater potential for a smaller group of people to have a larger, negative impact on ethical aspects production, distribution and consumption because of the interdependency within the infrastructure of the mass-distribution of food; the interdependency tied up with production, distribution and consumption that is involved economically--not to mention from a basic, systematic survival standpoint as well as potential political dangers. This is freightening and causes me to believe we need to re-think our social reasoning and our ethical reasoning because of the long-term affect it may have on us "humans" as a species. More importantly, we ought to re-think our approach to the interpretation and understanding of how our ethical reasoning plays into our future happiness and survivability as a species. As Derrida is noted for [his], "thinking turns on a structuralist understanding of language as as system of differential relationships, in which concepts acquire significance only in relation to other concepts. No concept is autonomous or exists independent of the generative process of differentiation". [3]
In other words, Derrida essentially thinks social concepts play into the concepts of eco-systems, the eco-systems affect the economy, the economy plays into ethics, ethics play into the anthropological, the anthropological is tied up with the psychological and the philosophical, pity, compassion, sympathy, empathy, greed, racism and so on. . . None of them directly related absolutely, rather absolutely all indirectly inter-related. To categorize them all neatly as animals is absurd. The text/anthology refers to this approach as "deconstructionism". I think a more modern term might be "interdisciplinary" or even "multidisciplinary". When considering the problems of animal rights, we might want to consider various linguistic or semantical aspects of the term "animal rights", using how we perceive it pragmatically, psychologically and philosophically. Derrida's poses, "All that is well known; we have no need to dwell on it. However one interprets it, whatever practical, technical, scientific, juridical, ethical, or political consequence one draws from it, no one can deny this event any more, no one can deny the unprecedented proportions of this subjection of the animal." [4]
Animal kindness aside, when I stop and consider the actual potential for a bio-hazard disaster in a society that assembly-line produces and distributes animals in such careless, inhumane ways, and how susceptible this makes us to tragedy, error or even terror, I find this reflects not only our nakedness as moral beings being looked at by the animals, thoughtless enough to think they're not looking back at us, but I also find how unable we are to see within society and relate how our own dogmatic beliefs play into these uses of our human power to control nature, controlled not only by controlling "animals", by mutilating and slaughtering them, but also by controlling humans from a rhetorical standpoint to accept this behavior as being morally just.
According to Eartlings, Pfiesteria piscicida is an example of a spreading bio-hazard, 1,000 miles away from the shore. Not only is there an utterly clear moral issue of the ethical treatment of animals, but the level of awareness should be raised. The public isn't aware of everything entailed with the discourse of "animal rights". Frankly, I think most people would agree animals need to be treated more humanely. And if we're going to execute them, we should to it in the most humane way possible, regardless of cost. The term "animal rights" is a tough one to pin down. And I sort of agree with Derrida. As soon as you use the term "animal", you've lost the battle because you've stopped thinking and grouped them all into the same category... "animals". This is where Derrida's philosophy, or reasoning, comes into play. And I found pondering his writings a rather interesting experience. To achieve a greater state of being, we must first think in terms differently than strictly deductively or inductively. We must combine various lines of thinking in order to achieve the highest insight to ourselves and the world around us as is humanely obtainable. I think when we're able to do that and tap into our not only our highest level of thoughts, but our highest level of being as well.
[12]
[1] http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/EPH/8792.jpg
[2]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxwNk3nX0A0
[3]p 216, Course anthology
[4]p 225 Course anthology
[5]p 228, Course antholgy
In other words, Derrida essentially thinks social concepts play into the concepts of eco-systems, the eco-systems affect the economy, the economy plays into ethics, ethics play into the anthropological, the anthropological is tied up with the psychological and the philosophical, pity, compassion, sympathy, empathy, greed, racism and so on. . . None of them directly related absolutely, rather absolutely all indirectly inter-related. To categorize them all neatly as animals is absurd. The text/anthology refers to this approach as "deconstructionism". I think a more modern term might be "interdisciplinary" or even "multidisciplinary". When considering the problems of animal rights, we might want to consider various linguistic or semantical aspects of the term "animal rights", using how we perceive it pragmatically, psychologically and philosophically. Derrida's poses, "All that is well known; we have no need to dwell on it. However one interprets it, whatever practical, technical, scientific, juridical, ethical, or political consequence one draws from it, no one can deny this event any more, no one can deny the unprecedented proportions of this subjection of the animal." [4]
Animal kindness aside, when I stop and consider the actual potential for a bio-hazard disaster in a society that assembly-line produces and distributes animals in such careless, inhumane ways, and how susceptible this makes us to tragedy, error or even terror, I find this reflects not only our nakedness as moral beings being looked at by the animals, thoughtless enough to think they're not looking back at us, but I also find how unable we are to see within society and relate how our own dogmatic beliefs play into these uses of our human power to control nature, controlled not only by controlling "animals", by mutilating and slaughtering them, but also by controlling humans from a rhetorical standpoint to accept this behavior as being morally just.
Without a voice, they are looking at us. And we have allowed ourselves the right to look upon animals and perpetuate a moral way of thinking that only serves our own moral significance. But when we consider all the things associated with our relationship with animals, we notice that our wants triumph our actual needs, our minds left controlled by dogmatic beliefs, syllogistic logic or dualities of good and/or bad. It soon becomes that feeling has no reason to be reckon with. Seemingly, we concieve that animals have no feelings. Hence, as Derrida wrote,
War is waged over the matter of pity. This war probably has no age but, and here is my hypothesis, it is passing through a critical phase. We are passing through that phase and it passes through us. To think the war we find ourselves waging is not only a duty, a responsibility, an obligation, it is also a necessity, a constraint that, like it or not, directly or indirectly, everyone is held to. Henceforth and more than ever. And I can say "to think" this war, because I believe it concerns what we call "thinking". The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins there." [5]
According to Eartlings, Pfiesteria piscicida is an example of a spreading bio-hazard, 1,000 miles away from the shore. Not only is there an utterly clear moral issue of the ethical treatment of animals, but the level of awareness should be raised. The public isn't aware of everything entailed with the discourse of "animal rights". Frankly, I think most people would agree animals need to be treated more humanely. And if we're going to execute them, we should to it in the most humane way possible, regardless of cost. The term "animal rights" is a tough one to pin down. And I sort of agree with Derrida. As soon as you use the term "animal", you've lost the battle because you've stopped thinking and grouped them all into the same category... "animals". This is where Derrida's philosophy, or reasoning, comes into play. And I found pondering his writings a rather interesting experience. To achieve a greater state of being, we must first think in terms differently than strictly deductively or inductively. We must combine various lines of thinking in order to achieve the highest insight to ourselves and the world around us as is humanely obtainable. I think when we're able to do that and tap into our not only our highest level of thoughts, but our highest level of being as well.
Jeremy Bentham once said something like, "The question is not to know whether the animal can think, reason, or talk, something we still pretend to be asking ourselves". [6]
I'm almost certain what he meant by that is we pretend that animals cannot feel, because we lack capacity to take exercise our empathy and compassion to think from a non-humanocentric viewpoint. Because animals serve our needs and wants, because they've been deeply imbedded into our daily customs, we have organized our thoughts to think along the lines of "animal rights" either being good or bad. Not only should we consider Bentham's question, "But is there any reason why we should be suffered to torment them?" [7] We should also use our sympathetic imagination, which is defined as, "The act of identification consists not in reading into the object subjective feelings aroused by it in the observer, but in perceiving, by instinctive but spacious insight, the essential character and reality of the object itself." [8]
And whenever we read into the object, or the animal, we then find our own answers. As my great professor once wrote when referring to the sympathetic imagination, "In the questions of human nature, therefore, such as those concerning the creative process, the emphasis in the arts and the humanities often remains on individuals". [9]
My personal answer lies with in the definition of "animal" and perhaps an allusion to Derrida's view. Definition: b. With the. The animal nature in man: cf. BEAST. n. 1c. [10]. Which leaves me pondering the title of "The Animal That Therefore I Am".
Another answer to this particular question of human nature is that I am a humanimal. Therefore, since I share similar traits of feelings and suffering, I should act towards my fellow sentient beings with compassion and kindness, rather than as some being who was born to serve my needs. That's why I've recently become a born again vegetarian. Now my vegetarian friends approve of me--just like in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, "they'll look down on you. Not all of hem, but some. You know how people are about not taking care of an animal; they consider it immoral and anti-empathetic." [11]
[12][1] http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/EPH/8792.jpg
[2]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxwNk3nX0A0
[3]p 216, Course anthology
[4]p 225 Course anthology
[5]p 228, Course antholgy
[6] 226, Course anthology
[7] p 245 Course anthology
[8]p 241, Course anthology
[9]p 333, E 375 course anthology[10] p 230, Course anthology
[11] Phillip, K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), p 13
[12] http://www.marceljacob.com/jss/anx-covers/humanimal-cd.jpg
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