Savannah's Sphere

Dolphin Documentary

2010-05-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

Taiji, Japan was a “little town with a big secret”. This small town on the coast of Japan seems tranquil and quiet, but in reality, it is a place of brutality and covert, horrific actions involving the exploitation, abuse and murder of bottlenose dolphins. The development of the organization in Taiji was run around the implementation of little rules, with the exception of secrecy. The shores off of Tailji were filled with hundreds and hundreds of dolphins – some alive, but most dead. The Japanese began harvesting dolphins for the use in entertainment after observing the grand success of the movie Flipper. The narrator of the documentary was the trainer of Cathy, the flipper dolphin. As he was training her, he had no idea what ideas were brewing based upon his success.

Cathy was so intelligent that she could watch herself on television and could recognize herself from other dolphins. Because Cathy was trained so well, the movie Flipper earned an astonishing profit, launching the dolphin-entertainment industry. Twice a year, the bottlenose dolphin migrate along the Japan shores. Dolphins as a species lead auditory driven lives. The Japanese took advantage of this dependence that dolphins have on sound in order to capture and harvest the dolphins as they pleased. The harvesters would line up in boats right outside of the migration line with thick metal poles placed into the surrounding water. As soon as the dolphins began migrating, the hunters would bang the submerged poles with hammers and the loud, vibrating sound would drive the dolphins towards shore, directly into the nets.

Once in the nets, the dolphins were captured for good, no escaping. Dolphin trainers from around the world gather once the dolphins are caught and they choose which dolphin they want to train. The hundreds of dolphins left without a trainer are left to die, rather than released. Once the dolphins are chosen by a trainer, they are shipped off to their perspective new homes and kept in small tanks only to be exploited for their tricks and stunts. “A dolphin’s smile is their most deceptive feature”. To be honest, I knew nothing about dolphins living in captivity, nor did I ever bother to wonder where they came from or how they came to be captive rather than living in their natural environments. It was horrifyingly upsetting to see the way that they were treated. The documentary was made not only to expose the torturous means of capturing dolphins but also to show how they were exposed. The Japanese people of Taiji did everything in their physical power to prevent outsiders from coming to their small town and seeing the work that they were doing underwater. The narrator of the documentary prodded without ease until the workers of this business was exposed and shut down. He was successful!

http://www.deeper-blue.org/Blog-DeeperBlue/public/120_THE_COVE.jpg

http://www.japanprobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/the-cove.jpg

Speaking For The Unspoken

2010-04-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

Squire Gordon, Mrs. Gordon, James Howard, John Manly, Blomefield Children, Joe Green, Earshire Park Mistress, Mr. York, Lady Anne, Reuben Smith, Mr. Barry, Jerry Barker, Polly, Harry Dolly, Governor Grant, Jakes Nicholas Skinner, Farmer Thoroughgood, Ellen and Lavinaia Blomefield and many groomers are all humans that are pebbled throughout Beauty’s life as an owner, a caretaker, or simply a player in the ups and downs of his life. The way that beauty is tossed around from place to place with little to no regard for his feelings, could be compared to a car being traded between dealers, a sandwich being traded at lunch or stocks being exchanged in New York, but I find that the most direct and equivalent correlation of the trafficking of Black Beauty in this novel is to a foster child being passed around to different homes throughout their lives.

A foster child is taken away from their parents either because they are unable to care for them or because circumstances force the child to be taken from their original home and placed under the care of a guardian. The child, like Beauty as no choice as to which foster home they are sent to, nor do they have any say of how they are treated in those homes. Each of the humans listed above were involved in Beauty’s life for a small amount of her life and impacted her emotions. He became afraid of bearing reins because her mistress at Earlshall insisted that he wear them while Jerry Barker allowed him to see the depths of a loving family and long for that love for himself. Similar to many foster parents, there were some humans in Beauty’s journey that were loving and desired for him to be happy. Ginger and Sir Oliver are the equivalents of foster siblings to Beauty.

They each have their scars and marks from their previous owners. Sir Oliver had his tail chopped off simply because his owner thought it was stylish while Ginger has a bad temper because she was abused by her previous owners. Beauty also had good influence from her ‘foster parents’, such as Mr. Barker. Mr. Barker protected the interests of Beauty because he took ownership of his feelings. Because Beauty could not speak, Mr. Barker took special interest in the desires of Beauty, as the sole being that could be a voice for those with no verbal voice. “Well, Polly, you may say that my cab will be otherwise engaged; I should not like to have it pasted over with their great bills, and as to make Jack and Captain race about to the public-houses to bring up half-drunken voters, why I think ‘twould be an insult to the horses. No, I shan’t do it’” (42). When humans such as Mr. Barker are involved in an aninmal, such as Beauty’s, life, they set the standards for how all animals should be treated. Animals are essentially a prisoner within themselves in a world based upon the spoken language. When humans are not attentive to the animals needs or desires, they will be blind to them. “I am ashamed to see how men go on that ought to know better. An election is a very serious thing ; at least it ought to be, and every man ought to vote according to his conscience and let his neighbour do the same” (42). Each person ought to consider the lives of all beings around themselves. Just like a child, an animal is ruled by those of authority to them. Sewell used the powerful tactic of voice to annunciate the importance of humbleness in authority and care for others. Simply because an individual is comfortable in their place, each is not to their own. Animals are born without voice and I agree with Sewell in that it is time to take the initiative for the animals and speak for them.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Bearingrein.jpg
http://www.jewel-images.com/blog/?p=643

Ignorant

2010-04-21T22:29:00.000-07:00

According to the official website, Cirque Du Soleil is a flashy, “dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment” while a circus itself publically entails cotton candy, clowns and nothing other than fun. It is what goes on behind the scenes of these ostentatious performances that is atrociously and conspicuously hidden behind the curtains and the smiling face-painted clowns. Circuses make their profits from the customer’s satisfaction in the show. A customer’s satisfaction comes from seeing the unusual, witnessing the seemingly impossible and making believe what they never thought they would. Flexible humans, trapeze artists and performing animals are usually the highlights. The humans in the shows choose to use their own talents to earn themselves their livelihood, while the animals are forced to act in specific ways with absolutely no benefit to themselves except for the possibility of not getting abused for tor disobeying. As we saw in Earthlings, human elephant trainers in the circus clan are emotionally and physically abusive to their students. They yell and hit the elephants simply because they can and they feel superior over them, which is an interesting concept to me because the elephant is so much larger physically than the human. Animals that are taken on the road with circuses are treated with little to no regard to their health by their caretakers.

These animals are meant to be living in the wild and when they are held in small cargo trains for weeks at a time, they develop captivity-induced health problems that are linked to lack of proper exercise and prolonged chaining around their necks and ankles (according to http://www.animalrightsflorida.org/Circus.htm). In Sewell’s Black Beauty, Beauty is taken from her world of natural kindness and thrown into a new world with complete and utter ignorange and carelessness of his sufferings and pains all alone, with “No other creature…” besides the misogynistic human (27).

. Beauty is referred to as a steam engine and is not assigned a single attribute of a living species. “…if you don’t want to lame your horse, you must look sharp and get them out quickly. This foot is very much bruised…if I might advise, sir, you had better drive him gently for a while; the foot is a good deal hurt, and the lameness will not go off directly. ‘…When he was gone, my driver began to flop the reins about, and whip the harness, by which I understood that I was to go on, which of course I did, glad that the stone was gone, but still in a good deal of pain. This was the sort of experience we job-horses often came in for”(28). Although beauty got a rock stuck in her shoe and was clearly injured, her driver continued to push him, disregarding any pain that he may have because the driver simply desires to press forward. Animals that are under the control of ignorant humans forces them to shape their own mindset in order to handle their awful circumstances. “There was a great deal of bargaining; of running up and beating down , and if a horse may speak his mind so far as he understands, I should say there were more lies told, and more trickery at the horse fair, than a clever man could give an account of” (32). Sewell portrays Beauty as having superior intelligence to the abusive humans. Animals like Beauty are put through outrageous pain and sorrow because their masters are selfish and boorish to the idea that animals have physical and mental capacities equal to or superior to many individuals of the human race.

http://www.animalrightsflorida.org/Circus.htm

http://allianceforanimalrights.webs.com/elephant-ent-13.jpg

http://www.mpimages.net/mp/compressed/promotional/young_black_beauty1.jpg

Running Potential

2010-04-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

While delving into a book, it is not usually expected to be reading from the perspective of something other than a human, yet that exactly what we get in Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. Sewell presents animal cruelty from the point of view of the mistreated rather than like most other author’s who speak from an objective view, or from the view of the abuser themselves. When animal cruelty is spoken about through the lips of an animal rights human, although they side with the animal, they are still of the same species as the ones imparting the injustice and therefore lose a little of their credibility as an animal advocate. There is no way that a human could fully understand the same feelings or emotions that an animal may have during cruel actions. It is the fact that animals are subjugated to horrific acts that makes it so difficult for humans to use a sympathetic imagination towards the animal’s feelings. “…[W]ith cruelty and oppression it is everybody’s business to interfere when they see it…” but what about for the millions of humans who never see it (20)? In this novel, Sewell does as best as any human could do to put herself in the hooves of a horse who is subjected to abuse by the human species. Sewell does an excellent job of getting to the soul of the humans and animals alike by allowing Black Beauty to have animal and human friends as well as animal and human enemies. Sewell not only used this novel to put herself in the place of the horses, but also to let each of her readers get a small taste of what animal cruelty can look and feel like.

Sewell gave each horse in her novel a voice and a place. Each horse was a character in its own with a personality, characteristics and vices. The horses are given human traits to make it easier for the human readers to relate. “Merrylegs could not be resisted, so we broke off our long conversation, and got up our spirits by munching some very sweet apples which lay scattered on the grass” (10). According to the average human, animals cannot speak or feel, much less carry on a conversation and have relationships. The difference that many humans place between themselves and animals is that they can perceive themselves in a place and that they can feel passion and build bonds with others of their kind or even interspecies. In Black Beauty these horses passionately feel and emotionally act on their ideas and emotions.

Humans do not understand the ways of animals, how they think and how they act are so foreign to us because we do not have the same form of communication. “[Ginger] did bite James once pretty sharp, but John said, ‘Try her with kindness,’ and instead of punishing me as I expected, James came to me with his arm bound up, and brought me a bran mash and stroked me; and I have never snapped at him since, and I won’t either” (8). This novel encourages acts of kindness towards animals and discourages the instinctual acts of superiority such as using bearing reigns. Sewell embraces the relationship between human and animal as something with so much room to grow and succeeds in making her readers aware of this relationship potential. Animal instinct is to love and embrace, what is human's instinct?

Jainism vs. Christianity

2010-04-12T08:36:00.000-07:00

What was the deciding factor of the differences between humans and animals? Do humans think they are superior over animals because we walk on two legs rather than four or because we speak with articulate words while they speak with signals or sounds? According to Jainism and Ecology, “religion distinguishes the human species from all others, just as human presence on earth distinguishes the ecology of our planet fro other places in the unknown universe. Religious life and the earth’s ecology are inextricably linked, organically related” (810).

Many humans, specifically westerners, believe that we, as a species, have reign over the animal species because we were given this right by God himself. “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things” (Genesis 9:3, 809). God may have blessed humans with animals as their companions, but He also told his sons “…the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth…”(Genesis 9:2, 809). I believe that we were given animals as a gift, yet as a species we have completely taken this gift for granted and taken advantages of the seeming superiority that we have with our brain capacities and exponential technological advances. The “task…of revaluing nature so as to prevent its destruction marks a significant new phase in religious thought”. Religion is not a single decision made on a whim by a single person. All religions are traditional waves that have been shaped and twisted from some original idea to what is practices in today’s society. Expanding the religious realm of human-animal relations will take more than simply a few advocates speaking out on the animals’ behalves. Religion is one of the most immovable, stubborn theologies on the planet. In order for a movement to happen involving religion would take a radical movement with explicatory action. Jainsim is “an ancient religion of India, also now found in other countries around the world, that prescribes a path of peace and non-violence towards all living beings” (Wikipedia Jainism). A part of Jainsim called Ahimsa is a “non injury, of course, [and] implies non-killing. But, non-injury is not merely non-killing. In its comprehensive meaning, Ahimsa or non-injury means entire abstinence from causing any pain or harm whatsoever to any living creature either by thought, word or deed. Non-injury requires a harmless mind, mouth, and hand” (815).

The crisis and cause of many major wars has its source at the bounds of religion. The difference between the non-kill ideas of Jainism and the non-killing ideas of Christianity are vast. While non-kill means not killing any living thing to Jainists, non-kill to Christians means not killing another human being. Killing animals is okay for Christians because God has given them animals as a means to nurture themselves and survive while Jainists find other means of nutrition as this is what is required to avoid killing or hurting any living thing, emotionally or physically. How can two religions that are so different come together on such a contradictory idea? According to the Neo-Confucian Manifesto, “such crises have their origin in man’s inability to control his cultural products and inventions…it is clear that the formation of a world civilization is contingent upon co-operation on a high plane among the various cultures of the world” 832). I agree with this notion that in order to make a difference in the world and in order to collide two very different religions, people must cooperate or else no progress would be made. Christian and Jainist ideas on eating animals is contingent on their respective religious leaders and this is likely not to change unless eyes are opened to the reality of the others’ thought origins. For these two separate worlds to converge and even align, there must be major cooperation and sympathetic imagination must be utilized in order to fully understand one another.

http://www.pluralism.org/resources/statistics/jainism_distribution.gif

http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/churchbodies.gif

http://www.mumbaikar.com/en/media/get/20090825_mahavir.gif

Differences Nearly Never Converging

2010-04-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

Figure 1: Human and animal brains are more similar than the average human knows.

Humans walk on two legs while animals walk on four. Humans have hair while animals have fur. Humans have the capacity to think and acknowledge that they are thinking while animals have the capacity to think and to immediately act on what they are thinking. “Animals are born, are sentient and are mortal. In these things they resemble man. In their superficial anatomy – less in their deep anatomy – in their habits, in their time in they physical capacities, they differ from man. They are both alike and unlike” (795). There are so many ways in which the man can be seen as advantageous over the animal. The man has technology and higher level thinking but the animal has instinct that man has lost most sensitivity to due to these same recent technological advancements that give them the false sense of superiority. As I watch to myself type this paper, I can’t help but notice my lack of commitment to either species. I refer to animal and human with the same term, “them”. I am obviously a human, but what makes a human so human besides physical and mental traits? “Between two men the two abysses are, in principle, bridged by language…language allows men to reckon with each other as with themselves…whereas in animals feat is a response to signal, in men it is endemic” (795). Through extremely in depth studies, experiments and analyses, it has been found that there are many biological similarities between humans and animals. From the eyes of a child, it seems that this strict line separating humans and animals disappears into the realm of invisibility. I would assume that every person found a childhood friend in a dog, cat or fish. It is not until these children grow up and are immersed into the cultural pull so society that they are swayed into believing that the differences that humans and animals do not share separate them into inferior and superior beings. “With their parallel lives, animals offer man a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species”(796). Like children, animals do not differential humans as a species of particular danger or dislike. They understand that we are different, not constituting different with any negative connotation, just as different.

Figure 2: Animals were used by royalty as symbols are higher class.

Just as a college roommate shares a space with us, animals share a space with us on this planet. It is a shame that animals are merely seen as a source of food, entertainment or trouble, rather than the beautiful beings that they were created to be. In the early centuries of the world, “…admirers valued these exotic menageries as marvels, not because of any fondness for their inmates…but [most] served mainly as toys or badges of rank, and whatever affection befell on them neither extended to other animals nor was mimicked by the lower orders of society” (801). Since the beginning of time, humans have found themselves to prevail over animals simply because they had the tools to do so. “presumption is our natural and original disease…’Tis by the same vanity of imagination that he equals himself to God, attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and separates himself from the crowd of other creatures, cuts out the shares of the animals, his fellows and companions, and distributes to them portions of faculties and force” (835). As humans, we act as if we completely understand the differences between man and animal, that we can fathom the lack of feeling that they have and their lack of intelligence. We will never be able to comprehend the thoughts of animals or appreciate their levels of thinking because on a level of reality, we can never sincerely empathize with them because we are different than them. We are not animals just as they are not humans. There are similarities, of course, but there are also differences that make them distinct from us and visa versa. “Just because of this distinctness, however, an animal’s life =, never to be confused with a man’s can be seen to run parallel to his. Only in death do the two parallel lines converge” and only then might we have the total capacity to understand and empathize with each others differences (796).

https://files.nyu.edu/ahk291/public/Standard%20Poodles%20%20Famous%20Poodles.html

http://www.solarnavigator.net/human_brain.htm

MANkind

2010-03-31T17:32:00.000-07:00

Growing up, my father rarely missed an opportunity to remind me that as long as I was living under his house, I had to abide by his rules and was essentially under his control. What gave him the ability to claim to ownership over me? What gave my father, and my mother as well, the edge over me was that they bore me, they raised me and provided for me. I follow their rules because I wanted to, not because I was afraid of the consequences if I didn’t. A father may have superiority over his children for a select span of their lives, but this ownership should never carry over to superiority over differing sexes, species or races but it does. Paralleling the way that humans treat animals, many men treat women with disrespect, inferiority and abuse. “Applying images of denigrated nonhuman species to women labels women inferior and available for abuse; attaching images of the aggrandized human species to men designates them superior and entitled to exploit. Language is a powerful agent in assigning the imagery of animal vs. human. “ (785). Words like “bitch” fox” and “cougar” are all words used to describe a woman’s physique, mostly used by men. This raises the question of why use animal names to describe a woman? Why no t men? Why aren’t these same words used to describe a woman’s innerself? If “
the use of animals’ [names] reflects the speciesists’ belief that humans fundamentally differ from all nonhuman animals and are inherently superior” then how is it okay to relate a human to these names (789). Human beings are biologically extremely similar to many, if not most, of animal species. According to Wikepedia, “In literal, non-slang use, bitch is a term for female canines, particularly amongst dog breeders. It is also a common English profanity for a woman that typically carries denigrating or misogynistic overtones—such as resemblance to a dog. It is also used to characterize someone who is belligerent and unreasonable, or displays rudely intrusive or aggressive behavior”. From my project two research of female breeding dogs, I have found that female dogs, bitches, are often used solely for pumping out puppies, which in turn leads to profit. These dogs are abused, beaten and disrespected, just as many men treat women. Men call women Bitches because they have some distorted view of superiority over them and feel that they have the right to treat them however they want solely because they were born with enhanced rights. “…Man and mankind too reflect speciesism. Their power to lower women’s status rests on the premise that those outside our species do not merit equal consideration and respect”. Just as ignorant humans abuse animals, ignorant men abuse women (717).

As a new coinsure of animal treatment awareness, it is degrading and boorish to animals, more than to the women at stake. A woman called a “bitch” may sincerely have a conceited, rude attitude and deserve to be called a name such as “rude” or conceited”. The dog, on the other hand, is related to such an ill-mannered person as this, negatively personifying an innocent, giving animal. Most animal dervived names that are given to human are almost always derogatory with negative connotation. “That lady is a whale!”and “You dirty dog!” are often used terms referring to a heavy set person or a sneaky, deceiving person. Animals are not ill-mannered species unless provoked, usually by humans themselves. It is offensive to name impolite humans the names of caring and intelligent animals.

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/superjoker/news/?a=8398

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/raim0007/gwss3307_fall2007/2007/09/

Raw Consumerism

2010-03-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

Prof. Bump

E379 Animal Humanities

29 February 2010

Raw Consumerism

Seventh grade history was my first exposure to the rapid-spreading epidemic that stretched like a disease across post World War II America: Consumerism. Although the rest of the world was in turmoil and aftershock from the deadliest war to of all time, America embraced this recovery as a time to strengthen its own economy by taking advantage of the other world markets that were hungry for U.S-produced products. The American economy boomed with fashion, innovative technologies and wild growth of real estate. Families strived for normalcy and were eager to catch up with the Jones’ way of life. Pressure towards conformity hit the American white and blue-collar citizens like a tidal wave across the country. A consumerism frenzy fueled by pent up demand lead to a dilution of the horrific war tragedies and magnification of the flourishing economy at hand. According to the History of Purina, “The 1950s [were] often simplified as a time of great conformity, a time when everybody wanted to act, think, talk, and dress the same…Mass consumerism [was] fueled by fast foods, credit cards, TV dinners and the golden age of television. High-tech electronics based on the transistor become a part of industry and daily life…In agriculture, productivity soar[ed] with the ‘Green Revolution’ and new technologies. Far fewer farmers produce[d] more than ever before”[1]. The “perfect family” complete with station wagon and golden retriever was the ideal lifestyle and the yearning of most Americans. The newspapers of 1949, as well as my current US history books, are glittered with the smiling faces of home-buyers and shelves filled with tail-wagging puppies, ready to decorate and add life to these new homes. During this time of sweeping social changes, idealized styles were exposed in the media and quickly translated into individuals’ lives. As prosperity for the American people flourished, a revolution of tragic hardship began for those with no voice and this uprising would last for decades with little to no recognition.

As monopolies dominated the burst in crop consumerism, small farmers responded by searching for a new cash crop to fill their budgeting needs. The hasty demand for puppies that was accelerated with post WWII conformity lead small farmers of the Midwest to develop the first commercial puppy breeding kennels. Backed by the United States Department of Agriculture, USDA, this alternative source of income was seen as a mere piece of cultivation and a marginal cash crop. The puppy market skyrocketed once these dog farmers began capitalizing on the sales of young dogs to department stores such as Sears and Roebuck & Co. As the demand for puppies increased, supply increased as well. With little to no concern of where the puppies came from consumers ignorantly purchased and homed. With no responsibility to the buyers or to the pets themselves, stores paid little attention to the previous states of living of the animals. Due to the lack of awareness, or perhaps mere carelessness, as to what kind of environment the products came from, the living conditions, emotional and physical health became of secondary importance to their producers. The term “puppy mill” was coined in 1966 as a “commercial dog breeding facility that is operated with an emphasis upon profits above animal welfare and is often in substandard conditions regarding the well-being of dogs in their care”[2] (Link to living conditions and dog exploitation video: http://www.metacafe.com/w/180408/ ).By this definition, a puppy mill is a production company. Its products are not considered as lives, but rather as objects, as mere profit. The exploitation of the dogs housed and bred in puppy mills does not stop with little attention from their owner but presents these animals with poor living conditions going beyond what the mind can fathom. As many as eight dogs being crammed into a living three by four foot chicken wire-bottomed cage is nothing out of the ordinary at a puppy mill.

The female dogs contained at these production sites are given inhabitable conditions to live in and rarely escape this dirty, unfulfilling life. The mothers, also known as the “breeding stock”[3] are caged in minuscule areas with little food to be continually bred as long as they are fertile with little hope to ever have human companionship. Once the breeding stocks are no longer able to produce for their owners, they are either killed or sent to another mill where they will be once more raped of their own dignity until no more money can be squeezed from their lifeless, starving bodies. Many people “rescue…mature females destined to be shot because they were of no more value to the owners”[4]. Puppies that are sold out of puppy mills are solely sent to large corporation sites or sold through a middle man. With this strategy there is little to no contact or visibility to the outside world of the inhumane treatment of animals within a puppy mill. With this lack of interaction with the consumers, the future owners of these puppies remain unaware of their backgrounds and proceed to naively purchase an emotionally and physically unstable animals who were weaned from their mothers at the young ages of 5 weeks. Unwanted merchandise, puppies that are not ideal for the current marketplace, are nonchalantly killed off with no concern as to their pain or suffering.

These concentration camps for dogs are a hidden and very real part of American history that is steadily keeping pace in today’s society as well. A slowly increasing awareness has prompted the government to take modest action towards better treatment of puppy-producing animals. Starting with the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which set “minimal standards for the care, housing, sale and transport of dogs, cats, primates, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and other animals held by animal dealers or laboratories”[5], the general public became more conscious of the utilization of dogs in hidden mills but government passed acts do not suffice for the reinforcement and protection of these innocent animals. The Puppy Lemon Law was the first “Dog Purchaser Protection Act made pet stores financially responsible for sick animals purchased from them. Since then, 17 states have enacted similar laws, all of which give dog purchasers the right to return a sick or dead puppy for a refund or replacement”[6] .Yes, these acts are steps in the correct direction to advancing the awareness and protection of puppies and their mothers, but they simply do not encompass the necessary backing or action to fill their intentions. Despite these laws put into action by the federal and local governments, the chain of cruelty continues due to the lack of active action taken. Under present government-ruled kennel regulations, an astonishing amount of atrocious treatment is still permitted such as no human socialization with the kennel dogs or the puppies, no exercise, no resting periods between litters and there are no limitations on the number of litters a female can produce”[7]. It is a complete and utter lie to believe that puppies purchased from pet stores came from loving, cared for homes because according to the Texas Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, SPCA, 98% of these dogs come from inhumane puppy mills and are more often than not accompanied with unaddressed emotional and/or physical problems. The only way to shut down these puppy mills is to completely halt the demand on these animals. According to the laws of supply and demand, “the quantity demanded is the amount of a product people are willing to buy at a certain price and the quantity supplied is the amount if a certain good producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price”[8]. If the demand on puppies stops completely, the puppy producers will no longer have the ability to supply because they will not have the resources financially to continue their dirty ventures nor will the pet stores have the desire to continue purchasing from the dealers. This chain reaction beginning with the refrainment of the consumer will save the lives of millions of puppies and birthing mothers every year. Immediate effects of this goal will be heartbreaking in that many of these wide-eyed, innocent puppies may be killed because the pet stores may be overwhelmingly over stocked in this department of merchandise. This immediate heartbreak will lead to a breakthrough in the unveiling of these inappropriate breeding centers and will ultimately force the government to place strict enforce rules upon the breeding of puppies including housing, feeding and social interaction imperatives. As an ultimate goal, I hope that we, as a country of consumers, will change the allowances of inhumane treatment of dogs by raping this industry of any fidelity and success that they may have now so that they are forced to shut down their operations for good.

As a seemingly nationwide epidemic, the desire to help innocent animals sure is brushed under the rug a lot. In an attempt to take action and take steps towards what we can easily talk about, I propose that we, as a nation begin shutting down these puppy mills one at a time, through individual and group support of the humane treatment of dogs. The first step that should be taken at an individual level to stop these sadistic reproducing standards, is the refusal to purchase a puppy from any commercial establishment. It is difficult to ignore to innocent faces of the neglected animals, because if they go unpurchased, they will be disposed of. But in order to move forward in preventing these acts, some puppies may have to be sacrificed in the process. As an alternative to purchasing puppies from commercial retailers, adopt from the humane society, saving a life rather than promoting the abusive production of a life. In addition to discontinuing of purchasing probably puppy mill-produced puppies, we ought to be fully aware of our animal cruelty laws so that we can report any violations to the ASPCA and seek immediate action to submit justice to the guilty and to the victims. In addition to being up to date on animal cruelty laws, it is also an essential step towards removal of puppy mills to be knowledgeable in facts about puppy mills. Communities respond to the educated. Being a well-learned person in this movement will strengthen people’s trust in your ideas and give them reason to fight for the same cause along side with you. Administering flyers, speaking on radio stations or making bumper stickers are all moving and public ways to make your community aware. Because most of the puppy mill prevention laws instilled to date were in response to Mobile Animal CSI raids and successful busts of puppy mills in action, I propose that in order to maintain momentum of the government’s participation in the mission to prevent puppy mill success, we as a community ought to picket to instill laws allowing the CSI to not only require licensing for puppy breeders, but to allow frequent and unannounced checks on the environment and treatment of their dogs. By enforcing and strengthening the laws preventing inhumane treatment by puppy breeders, a fear will be instilled in them that can potentially impede the ease to which they run their production sites. Making yourself aware is the first step, followed by taking individual action. The next step is educating your community, which will result in the community taking action. With a large population taking preventative action on such a consumer-based business will surely destroy production, in turn exterminating their existence.

A bay horse from once told Black Elk Speaks, “take this [wooden cup full of water]. It is the power to make live, and it is yours…Take this [bow]…It is the power to destroy, and it is yours[9]” (221). It is our responsibility to speak for those with no voice. Puppies and breeding mothers across the country are living in callous conditions and being unjustly exploited and we, as consumers are currently promoting the heinous capitalization and disposal of helpless dogs. We have the power to make live and to destroy. As of late, we are choosing to destroy by simply complying and remaining oblivious to dastardly treatment of living creatures. By taking action, I will change the lives of puppies and mother dogs across the nations. I will make live.

Word Count with Quotes: 2004

Word Count without Quotes: 1,709

Figures:

1. http://www.buyvintageads.com/index.php?query=+dogs&start=1&perpage=50

2. http://dogspired.com/tag/puppy-mills/

3. http://www.freewebs.com/lasvegaspetadoptions/

4. http://www.petside.com/info/wellness/adoption-rescue/fighting-dogs.htm

[1] Société des Produits Nestlé S.A, "World War II and The Post War Boom,"

Purina Dog Food, http://www.purina.com/company/postwar.aspx (accessed March 28,

2010).

[2] The United States Humane Society, "Puppy Mills - Confronting Cruelty,"

The Humane Society of The United States, http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/

puppy_mills/ (accessed March 29, 2010).

[3] "SPCA of Texas Seizes 65 Neglected Dogs and One Cat from Hunt County

Property," SPCA of Texas, http://www.spca.org/site/

News2?page=NewsArticle&id=28587&news_iv_ctrl=1481 (accessed March 29, 2010).

[4] Joan Banks, Second Chances: Inspiring Stories of Dog Adoption, 1., 4th ed.

(n.p.: Adams Media, 2008),

[5] "Puppy Mills," The Humane Society of The United States,

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/puppy_mills/ (accessed March 28, 2010).

[6] "Dog Purchaser Protection Act," Puppy Lemon Act Law,

http://home.paonline.com/pfdc/ACT27S.HTM (accessed March 29, 2010).

[7] "What Current Pennsylvania Kennel Regulations Allow ," United Against

Puppy Mills, http://www.unitedagainstpuppymills.org/allow.html (accessed March

29, 2010).

[8] "Investopedia," Economics Basics: Supply and Demand,

http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics3.asp (accessed March

29, 2010).

[9] Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks., 221. Albany : State University of New York

Press, 1932.

Raw Consumerism

2010-03-29T18:42:00.000-07:00

Raw Consumerism

Panel Discussion

2010-03-26T16:46:00.001-07:00

A panel discussion with Professor Bump as a speaker would never be complete without documentation and discussion of the Alice books and their relation to animal cruelty. Bump emphasized that “there is no differentiation between human and animal slaves”.

Alice is used in these novels as a murderer, even of innocent babies in the case of the pigeon eggs. She threatens and implements specieistic qualities throughout the novel, yet many of these animal cruelty plots were dismissed when it came to the newest Alice movie. The white queen of Alice and Wonderland is the seemingly better half of the queen sisters (white and red queens). While the red queen portrays the quality of flat out animal cruelty, the white queen “tales of vow to never harm any living thing”. Although the white queen makes this proclamation very well known, she is still willing to allow Alice to harm a living thing, the Jabberwocky. The white queen actually tells Alice to kill the Jabberwocky justifying this act because she herself is not harming anything, but instead it is Alice, who has never taken this vow, who will instill harm. If this is the mindset of a pro-animal rights character, what does this insinuate about vegetarianism? If we are not the person doing the killing of the cow, are we allowed to eat a steak? Yes, we may take a vow never to hurt any living thing, but what about another person doing the hurting, and us merely benefitting, just as the white queen would benefit from Alice killing the Jabberwocky? Does this cross the line, or is it justifiable just as the killing of the Jabberwocky is justified by the white queen?

The final speaker, Anne Styles, particularly sparked my interest in her discussion and comparison of Dracula to vivisection scientist, David Ferrier. David Frierrer was a scientist who did experiments correlating certain activities to different regions of the brain. He used dogs and monkeys as his subjects and his findings were historic and proved to exponentially further human medicine and save many lives. The 1876 Antivivisection Act restricted many doctors and scientists from performing vivisection experiments, requiring a specific permit to perform these experiments. These liscenses were very restrictive and did not allow vivisection to be done merely for the purpose of teaching or for the subjects to be monkeys or dogs. In the case of Ferrier, monkey and dog subjects was justified as reasonable only because it saved so many lives. This begs the objection; where is this line drawn and how many human lives is enough to sacrifice the lives of innocent animals?

There were three criteria to which stipulated Styles’ comparison of Dracula and Ferrier. They both electrically stimulated brains of living things, they both hypnotize their subjects and they both sacrifice these victims. Dracula was an “amalgath of neurologists who dissect living animals”. The “electrical stimulation” that Dracula used was not with electricity as used by Ferrier, but rather telepathically, which in those days was thought to involve the emission of electric waves interacting from brain to brain.

Authors often use characters in books to exemplify hot topics of utmost importance here in the real world. The three speakers of the panel did an outstanding job in connecting the parallels of fiction and nonfiction versus reality and bringing to front the ideas of animal cruelty and equality.

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=961

http://www.draculas.info/gallery/picture_of_bram_stokers_dracula_1902_doubleday-89/

2010-03-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

In three very different takes on the same essential idea of animal rights and their relations to humans, Professor Bump, Professor Styles and Dr. Darwin (I could never seem to catch his name, therefore I will refer to him for now as Dr. Darwin) each presented a unique dissection (no pun intended) into allusionary books. Dr. Darwin delved into the idea that “Human expression is rooted in animal behavior”. This idea was furthered by the theory that just as animals pursue their prey and stay alive based on their advantageous survival genes just as humans may attack certain prey in order to keep themselves alive and pass down their genes. Animals are to humans, just as humans are to animals. Dr. Darwin promoted the idea that human actions initially derived from those of the animal-which brings up the question: is eating meat a form of cannibalism?
A panel discussion with Professor Bump as a speaker would never be complete without documentation and discussion of the Alice books and their relation to animal cruelty. Bump emphasized that “there is no differentiation between human and animal slaves”. Alice is used in these novels as a murderer, even of innocent babies in the case of the pigeon eggs. She threatens and implements specieistic qualities throughout the novel, yet many of these animal cruelty plots were dismissed when it came to the newest Alice movie. The white queen of Alice and Wonderland is the seemingly better half of the queen sisters (white and red queens). While the red queen portrays the quality of flat out animal cruelty, the white queen “tales of vow to never harm any living thing”. Although the white queen makes this proclamation very well known, she is still willing to allow Alice to harm a living thing, the Jabberwocky. The white queen actually tells Alice to kill the Jabberwocky justifying this act because she herself is not harming anything, but instead it is Alice, who has never taken this vow, who will instill harm. If this is the mindset of a pro-animal rights character, what does this insinuate about vegetarianism? If we are not the person doing the killing of the cow, are we allowed to eat a steak? Yes, we may take a vow never to hurt any living thing, but what about another person doing the hurting, and us merely benefitting, just as the white queen would benefit from Alice killing the Jabberwocky? Does this cross the line, or is it justifiable just as the killing of the Jabberwocky is justified by the white queen?
The final speaker, Anne Styles, particularly sparked my interest in her discussion and comparison of Dracula to vivisection scientist, David Ferrier. David Frierrer was a scientist who did experiments correlating certain activities to different regions of the brain. He used dogs and monkeys as his subjects and his findings were historic and proved to exponentially further human medicine and save many lives. The 1876 Antivivisection Act restricted many doctors and scientists from performing vivisection experiments, requiring a specific permit to perform these experiments. These liscenses were very restrictive and did not allow vivisection to be done merely for the purpose of teaching or for the subjects to be monkeys or dogs. In the case of Ferrier, monkey and dog subjects was justified as reasonable only because it saved so many lives. This begs the objection; where is this line drawn and how many human lives is enough to sacrifice the lives of innocent animals? There were three criteria to which stipulated Styles’ comparison of Dracula and Ferrier. They both electrically stimulated brains of living things, they both hypnotize their subjects and they both sacrifice these victims. Dracula was an “amalgath of neurologists who dissect living animals”. The “electrical stimulation” that Dracula used was not with electricity as used by Ferrier, but rather telepathically, which in those days was thought to involve the emission of electric waves interacting from brain to brain.
Authors often use characters in books to exemplify hot topics of utmost importance here in the real world. The three speakers of the panel did an outstanding job in connecting the parallels of fiction and nonfiction versus reality and bringing to front the ideas of animal cruelty and equality.

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=961
http://www.draculas.info/gallery/picture_of_bram_stokers_dracula_1902_doubleday-89/

Undeniable

2010-03-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

Facing topics of difficult nature or controversial descent has never been of high priority for the human race. Tending to thorny, debated issues us often brushed under the rug, Why? Why does the species who claims dominion over all others fear facing simple truths and realities such as the undeniable parallels between human slavery and treatment of animals?

Torture of slaves and animals

The similarities between the lives of the slaves and the lives of animals is nearly irrefutable. According to Jeremy Bentham, there are two “sorts…of agents that at the same time that they are under the influence of man’s direction, are susceptible to happiness: Other human beings who are styled persons…and other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things” (756).

Chains are symbols of African American Slavery

Humans as a species as well as individual races around the globe are guilty of racism, “a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures” as well as speciesism, “a belief that different species of animals are significantly different from one another in their capacities to feel pleasure and pain and live an autonomous life” (762). Both of these superiority complexes thrive on the idea that their own species or race has the “right to rule and use the others” (762). Marjorie Speigel points out in her book The Dreaded Comparison the cut and dry, so obvious if they were snakes they would have bitten you, parallels between slavery-related sufferings of black people and the “ sufferings of animals lost in the machinery of modern institutionalized cruelty” (770). “…from the disruption of self-regulated reproduction; to birth and the consequential destruction of the familial structure; throughout life and the many cruelties, such as vivisection and hunting, to which individuals are subjected”, from an outsider looking in, the way that humans regard and unjustly rule over animals is the same way that white Americans (as well as many others from other parts of the world) unjustly treated their slaves (770). It is difficult to come to terms with these similarities, which is why it is so easy for them to be overlooked. Remaining ignorant about difficult conclusions is a simple coping mechanism that has been utilized for centuries and is continuously being maintained today regarding the treatment of animals. “There are many disturbing similarities between their (slaves’) treatment at the hands of white people in the United States and the treatment of animals at the hands of a large sector of the American population”, yet it is being ignored daily (765).

In “Am I Blue?” Alice Walker steps over the line of speciesism and gives animals the characteristic that specicesists claim that they are lacking. Walker gives human qualities to an animal, completely realisticly, voiding any justification of speciesism. Blue, a horse who lives next door to Walker, is described as being “horribly lonely and bored” with “depth of feeling one could see in [his] eyes” (760). As mentioned earlier, speciesism is based off of the idea that an animal’s lack of the capacity to feel pain, pleasure or emotions. In Walker’s work, she completely null’s this theory because she is exemplifying passionate feelings and emotions within an animal that are normally given to humans. Walker describes Blue as “a crazed person” with “ a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human…and to think that there are people who do not know that animals suffer” (760).

http://www.animalslavery.net/
http://veggiemo.com/factsandthoughts.htm

How would you know?

2010-03-22T16:53:00.000-07:00

“The ability of a person to penetrate the barrier which space puts between him and his object and by actually entering into the object, so to speak, to secure a momentary but complete identification with it” (192), somewhat solidifies, for a moment, the connection between human and animal ways of thinking. I have found that art, encompassing everything from sculpture and poetry to painting and music, is the only outlet that enables a person to literally, pun absolutely intended, set their own thoughts, morals and contemporaries aside and instead take on the instinct, fear and mindset of another, specifically, of an animal.

Poetry as an art.

In order to essentially step into the fur of an animal, we, as humans, must first classify what makes us distinct from them. Where is the line drawn between your own and the others? Which corner of art allows these ideas to be explored best? J.M Coatzee’s Elizabeth Costello, allows this boundary separating humans and animals as two separate species to be defined and crossed in his applause of poets Rilke and Hughes. Coatzee commends Rilke’s “Panther” in its ability to soften any foreignness that an animal may possess and make it familiar. “He dissolves into a dance of energy around a center, an image that comes from physics, elementary particle physics. Rilke does not go beyond this point – beyond the panther as the vital embodiment of the kind of force that is released in an atomic explosion but is here trapped not so much by that bars of the cage as by what the bars compel on the panther: a concentric lope that leaves the will stupefied, narcotized. “ (Coatzee 95) Coatzee writes this fiction piece of work conveying within a strong relationship between Hughes and Rilke. “Hughes is writing against Rilke…He uses the same staging in the zoo, but it is the crowd for a change that stands mesmerized, and among them the man, the poet, entranced and horrified and overwhelmed, his powers of understanding pushed beyond their limit….the cage has no reality to [the jaguar], he is elsewhere.” (Coatzee 96). Hughes does more than describe the opportunity to being imaginatively sympathetic towards the panther, he gets into a state of mind of which he is the panther. “Writers teach us more than they are aware of. By bodying forth the jaguar, Hughes shows us that we too can embody animals – by the process called poetic invention that mingles breath and sense in a way that no one has explained and no one ever will.” (Coatzee 98).
Although it seems to have been a unanimous feeling amongst the selected authors for our reading this week, the idea of sympathetic imagination is not always a feasible goal for all. In Kafka’s “A Report for The Academy”, his protagonist, Red Peter, is an ape who becomes a human through physical and mental learning and training. Throughout the plot, Red Peter is either an ape or a human, never both.

Is physically morphing into the animal that you wish to understand the only way to accomplish this?

“And I learned, gentlemen. Alas, one learns when one has to. Once learns when one wants a way out. One learns ruthlessly. One supervises oneself with a whip and tears oneself apart at the slightest resistance. My ape nature ran off, head over heels, out of me…” (Kafka 662). Red Peter’s ape self left him, just in time for his human self to take shape. “I, a free ape, submitted myself to this yoke” (Kafka 658). There is a turning point in Red Peter’s life that he is not utilizing sympathetic imagination to feel an ape or a human’s feelings, but rather he actually becomes the other. Once he becomes one, he cannot go back to the other without falsely impersonating some aspect.
“At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom-“ (Hughes 668).

Is this what a jaguar sees? We would never truly understand unless we were them.

As mentioned previously, Hughes’ poem, “The Jaguar” the poet himself is mesmerized and afraid of his surroundings. The poet is not his human self in this poem, but rather he has put himself inside the cage, looking out just as the jaguar would be doing. I believe that poetry utilizes a surreal aspect of art that cannot be encompassed in fiction or non-fiction. The use of meter and rhyme has the ability to compliment completely the meaning of the other – the intensity of the exchange of self that Hughes himself has allowed himself to take.

http://www.art.com/products/p13062986-sa-i2290557/bella-decorative-poetry.htm
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7158/full/449026a.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robbratton/1527679046/

Fictitional Correctness?

2010-03-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

Choosing a superior route of advancing animal rights seems rather trivial to me when, just like learning math, different audiences prefer or even require different methods of teaching in order gaining knowledge and especially in order to respond. In addition to variations of learning methods, it is further difficult for me to prefer either nonfiction or fiction over the other as a means to promote animal rights when each of these two categories discuss the other as a valid source of information. Nonfiction writer, Wendy Doniger believes that “vegetarianism and compassion for animals is not the same thing at all” (643). In order to back this claim up with evidence, Doniger cites Elizabeth Costello, a fictional character created by J.M. Coetzee. “Elizabeth Costello vividly reminds us that it is unusual for most individuals to eat meat without killing animals…an equally normal for an individual to kill without eating the kill – or, indeed, any other meat “ (643).

I feel that choosing one side or other other from the fiction/nonfiction spectrum would only be detrimental to the advancement of animal rights because the two balance each other and fill voids that the other may not have the capacity to fill. With that being said, if I were forced to choose one or the other as being more productive in their fight for animal rights, I would choose non-fiction writers such as Doniger and Smuts. This decision was not made on which is more right or more data based, but rather what is more effective for me as an individual. The person sitting next to me may very well deem fictional writing as the stronger advocate because it is simply a decision of preference, rather than one is better than the other. It is a left brain, right brain sort of thing. It is not a person’s choice how they learn best, but one will generally prefer one over the other.

The idea of animal rights is far more concrete when it is tangible to me. Wrapping my head around abstract, imaginary ideas is much less convincing than hearing an argument based off of real life situations that I may be presented with in my future. I “gain a redeeming sense of compassion” when animal cruelty is compared with the treatment of the victims of the Holocaust because I have seen pictures of these people and have relatives who were submitted to such abuse (670). “Pain is pain, no matter what the species of the being that feels it” but, in my opinion, this I can empathize most with this statement when pertaining to nonfictional characters, rather than a made up father-daughter story such as Coetzee utilizes in his Disgrace. When Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped and nsot probably raped by her captor, my mom went out and bought me pepper spray and I am now very aware of my surroundings when I am walking anywhere alone. This was a true story that I felt was tangible. In contrast, Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones", a little girl is kidnapped raped and murdered. Was I afraid and sympathetic while reading the book? Yes. Did I change my attitude about life? No, it was not real, just a fictional story. In Jeremy Bentham asked the question, “The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But rather, Can they suffer?” (726). Yes, humans and animals both fulfill all three of these requirements, but my question becomes, Can fictional characters reason? Can fictional characters talk? Can fictional Characters suffer? I do not believe fictional characters can do any of these three things because they are not real, whereas nonfiction writers of animal rights advocacy speak truths about those and towards those that can both share in similar feelings, emotionally and physically. This connection allows me to believe that, if necessary, I choose nonfictional writing as the superior route of advancing animal rights.

http://universitycenters.ucsd.edu/play-movies.php?start=2010-02-07&end=2010-02-13&page=6

http://www.proteatours.de/en/countrys/south-africa/travel-information/literature/index.html

http://www.rjgeib.com/biography/europe/germany/berlin.html

Reading Road Maps

2010-03-09T11:49:00.001-08:00

Road Maps:

Amanda: I absolutely love the musical shifts. It clearly defines the two different stages in your life and amplifies the feelings that you had towards each: growing and learning in your early years, versus energetic and anticipation in your days as a student. You incorporated the most important things in your life (family, friends, experiences and friends) that shaped you into who you are today. The pictures went very well with the captions and quotes – they definitely complimented one another in the best way possible. There were a few grammar mistakes towards the beginning, but nothing that was too distracting from the entire show. Overall, great job.

Chelsey, you are hilarious. I can literally hear you saying the quotes that were used in the road map and it made me laugh out loud several times. My favorite part? Kanine Krunchies, definitely. The video used on that slide was really different than the usual pictures and set me back to when Pongo and Perdita were my best friends too. Your directness is awesome and very effective. “We. Are. Pals.” This line was so great, I have to reiterate: I can hear you saying it and it made me laugh out loud. Et’s be honest, the grand finale was the space cats. AMAZING. So weird…but so perfect. The music, the quptes and the flying cat were each so retro and perfectly fitting. This project was meant to fill everyone in on our lives and get to know our personalities, and yours did just that. You are so chill…typical ChillCat.

Cody: It’s pretty funny reading these after being in the class for more than a few weeks. I definitely feel like I have a tighter grasp of who everyone is – obviously not “who are you” who you is, because as has been impressed upon us, none of us no who ever ourselves are…but you get the picture. From this deeper understanding of each person’s personality, I more connect with these Road Maps, yours in particular. The opening line “…A miracle was born”. At first read, I thought, “Dang…conceited.” But now that I know you, it just made me laugh because it’s completely your personality shining through. There were a few technical issues, (music played and stopped before the show began) but they were insignificant for me. I really enjoyed the quotes from your past, especially the ones from you when you were younger. Hilarious. You did a great job showing who you are and where you came from…you don’t seem to have changed a bit – in a good way.

Patty: Great quote to start with! Who a better poet than him? I really enjoyed the streaming quotes across the ages. Very effective as opposed to the typical captions at the bottom of the page. It’s really obvious that you came from a happy life and jumped right in at UT as a continuation. Great incorporation of quotations. On small thing that I noticed was the inclusion of pictures of people lacking titles. For examples “little ones” – who are they? Besides this small thing, as a whole, your road map was very effective and telling of who Patty Mayorga is.
Ps. You have amazingly gorgeous eyes!

Animal Death Camps

2010-03-08T16:54:00.000-08:00

I can’t pretend that I understand the multitude of suffering that took place at in the Nazi death camps, but in an attempt to more fully understand it in the context of today’s world, I completely approve of the analogy between the cruelty of animals and the treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust.

When I typed "Death Camps" into google, this image came up. Proving the point precisely - animal cruelty is analogous to Nazi death camps.

As a great grandchild of a Nazi-Occupied-German Jew, it is preposterous to me that anyone in their right mind can claim sanity while at the same time, deny that the Holocaust ever took place. Rejecting the idea that a historically horrific event took place is just as ignorant as claiming that trees do not exist, or that the internet was never invented. “It’s not because they waged an expansionist war, and lost it, that Germans of a particular generation are still regarded as standing a little outside humanity, as having to do or be something special before they can be reemitted to the human fold. They lost heir humanity, in our eyes, because of certain willed ignorance on their part. …Ignorance may have been a useful survival mechanism, but that is an excuse, which, with admirable moral rigor, we refuse to accept” (64).

The Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Europe were captured by the Nazis like dogs are snatched by the dog catcher, they were robbed of any claim to identity that they may have had (names, belongings, family) like milking goats are given numbers rather than names, they were shoved into cargo holds with barely enough air to breath, like puppies at a puppy mill, the were experimented on and tortured, like the Japanese Quail are used for vivisection, and finally, they were euthanized or shot, just like any animal that is no longer of use to us as a human race. “Denunciation of the camps reverberates so fully with the language of the stockyard and slaughterhouses that it is barely necessary for me to prepare the ground for the comparison I am about to make…Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of…” (66,68). Just like the Nazis the vivisection experimenters feel superior to the animals that they dissect, the Nazis gave zero respect to the Jews, merely because they felt as if they were higher, more advanced beings. “Two patterns of suffering are morally equivalent if there are no morally decisive reasons for preferring one to the other” (172).

Seal Camp

J.M Coatzee’s Elizabeth Costello said, “It’s that I no longer know where I am…is it possible…that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? …Everyday I see that evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money. It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, ‘Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? Polish-Jewish skin it’s made of, we find that’s best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins…I look into [the owners’ eyes] and see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself…this is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can’t you? Why can’t you” (Coatzee 69)?

In agreement with David Sztybel, “even if anything can be compared to the Holocaust in some respects, nothing can be equated with this historical phenomenon,” yet at the same time, comparing the event to animal cruelty by no means “trivializes what happened to the victims of the Nazis” (732, 733). The comparison of animal cruelty to the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust is dead on and should arouse awareness in those who, like the Nazis, are denying that anything wrong is occurring. It is.

http://animalsmatter.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/beijing-cat-death-camps/

http://www.outofbox.in/worlds-best-photographers/

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/china-beijing-cat-death-camps.php

Modern Vivi

2010-03-03T21:13:00.000-08:00

Formulating theories and hypothesis, followed by experimentation in order to obtain data is an age-old scientific practice. Yes, experimenting has proven to produce a multitude of positive advances in research, but at what point do the benefits of these experiments expire from beneficial to horrendously array? Vivisection, “surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure”, is an example of data collection gone too far (Wikipedia). Operating on a living creature, with similar nervous system as humans have, creates a result of not only death, but awareness of pain and perception of undammed hurt.

While the experiment may indeed further medical knowledge or allow new familiarity with an aspect of the body, there is some point at which it is necessary to disallow such acts – this point is at vivisection. The practice of vivisection is “an inhumane, brutal procedure that has no place in a society that considers itself civilized” (555) and therefore ought to be seriously examined in and of itself in regards to morality and humanity. In agreement with Robert Titus, “ I respect the aims of the experiment[s], [but] I am revolted by the means” (555). As I previously mentioned, experimentation as a whole as tremendously accelerated and improved advances in medicine, which of course is an important venture, yet this by no means lends an excuse for the horrific means by which they are achieving these advances.

As brought up by Lewis Carroll in his “Some Popular Fallacies about Vivisection”, I can’t help but think of the humans that are experimenting on these creatures. Just as many humans would inflict pain upon another human in order to save the life of a child, it is possible that the experimenters are similarly imposing pain on another species in order to save their own. As cited by Carroll, Freemen wrote, “’the question is not as to the aggregate amount of suffering inflicted, but as to the moral character of the acts by which the suffering is inflicted” (544). Besides the few experimenters that perform vivisection due to possible sadistic tendencies, for most of the humans imposing this undeamed pain upon these innocent animals, “there probably never exists a point at which [they] will become numb to [the] sites that they must endure.

For now, vivisection exists solely with animal subjects, but as Carroll proposes, who is to say that there will never be a transition from animal to human subjects? Recently released movie, Shutter Island, involves this very idea – that humans become the subject of vivisection in order to advance the scientific knowledge of the human nervous system. “Humans view themselves as the elite species on the planet”, but if no action is taken to prevent it, vivisection on humans could rise, and then who will claim to be the elite?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdumGs1qoXM
View this link to see the trailer for Shutter Island
http://www.queeryouth.org.uk/community/index.php?act=ST&f=84&t=19718
http://media.photobucket.com/image/human%20vivisection/Trevor_N_Wood/vivisection.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivisection
http://dietoondie.com/2008/12/15/vivisection/

A Rabbit's Tale

2010-03-01T17:21:00.000-08:00

The title of this poem “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass” is ironically the most relative and concise title that this poem could have had. The irony comes from the idea that the entire poem is based upon entirely in concise and abstract ideas that are completely unrealistic, yet allow the readers to view this piece of art in relation to real world moral and ethical dilemmas. Similarly, each title of the chapters of the poem meet a hidden meaning to the “tea” (pun intended) and could not be more fitting to the ideas that the poem is centered around (Advice from a Caterpillar”, “A Mad Tea Party”(479, 488)). When instructed to write a blog about eating animals in the Alice books, I was dumbfounded as to where in this Disney story was there any relation to eating animals and, in actuality, what kind of serious ideas could be emphasized and coupled with such a seemingly childish story. It was not until after reading the annotated Alice stories that I realized that this is not a story about a little girl getting lost and eventually finding her way, but rather, in large part, about the human race being ignorantly and naively lost within their own human world that they unconsciously choose to ignore the world’s of those non-human lives around them.

Alice is placed in a situation in which the roles of animals versus human are essentially reversed. She is thrown in an unfamiliar place, in which she is aware that she is not at home, but rather “down here…” where “nobody seems to like her…” (477). In the familiar human world, humans take precedence over animals in nearly all aspects of life. Carroll’s desire to place Alice in the position of an animal is evident throughout his poem through his use of capitalization and pronouns. While human names are capitalized here on earth, in Wonderland, the animal’s names are capitalized, such as “Mouse” and “Caterpillar” (467, 480). The pronoun usage made very clear to me that Alice was the inferior species when Carroll, as the Lory, refered to Alice as an “it” (477). Alice’s ideas are not heard, not understood or merely not acknowledged, similar to the way the thoughts and ideas of animals go unnoticed in the human world. Animals have no choice as to where they live, who their company is or what they eat. At a meal with the Duchess in this “Wonderland”, Alice’s has a meal involving soup that has “certainly too much pepper..!” (483). Living amongst humans, animals are often robbed of their integrity and sense of “self”. Carroll again emphasizes the idea that Alice symbolizes the animal in the human world when the Duchess tells her, “’You don’t know much…and that’s a fact’” (483).

Carroll may have emphasized the vast differences in the way that animals are treated versus the way that humans are treated in our world in order to make his audience aware that animals may feel out of place and different here, therefore they require that much more empathy from the ruling species demographic (humans). In agreement with David Daniel, Carroll allows the reader to watch as Alice is forced to “learn to empathize with those who are different from her in order to grow up” (Daniel 538).
“Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up; if not, I’ll stay down here till somebody else’-but, oh dear!” (467). This poem truly forces the audience to consider what kind of person they are in the way in which they treat others who are different than themselves. Through Carroll’s strategic use of animals as the majority in the Alice poem, treatment of animals, specifically, may be acknowledged, evaluated and potentially changed in result of putting oneself in the outsider’s uncomfortable shoes.

http://browngrrrl.wordpress.com/2009/05/
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/s/suffering.asp
http://www.mixpod.com/forums/view-topic.php?id=7336&page=1

Dignity

2010-02-24T17:54:00.000-08:00

Oxford dictionary defines speciesism as “discrimination against or exploitation of certain animal species by human beings, based on an assumption of mankind’s superiority” (198). I, by no means, would consider myself a ‘speciest’, while at the same time, there is definitely an obvious difference between animals and humans. Animal’s parallel humans, more than they diverge from them. Humans walk upright, while animals walk on four, humans can make decisions based on logic and ethics, while animals make decisions based on instinct. So, yes, animals and humans are different, but who is to say one is any better than the other? Who is to decide who lives and dies and what kind of life-style they are permitted to survive through? “Beneath the many differences, there is a sameness. Like us, animals embody the mystery and wonder of consciousness” (567).

Growing up, my family was not the most well-off bunch in the neighborhood and for that reason, we were did not have the privilege of being picky eaters. Where the food came from was of no consequence to us, we were just concerned with eating ourselves and nurturing our own bodies. I have eaten meat throughout my entire life and, consequently, I enjoy the taste. Whether this enjoyment is merely through the accustomed taste, I am not sure. It was not until my junior year of high school that my animal-activist English teacher allowed the class to watch “Earthlings” that I began thinking twice about what I was consuming. Or who I was consuming. Anthropocentrism is “the conviction that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, the appropriate yardstick by which to measure the lives of other animals, and the rightful owner of everything that lives” (603). There is absolutely no excuse for a human to feel as if they are in control of another being. Scenes pebbled throughout “Earthlings” focused on not only the cruel physical abuse and murdering of the animals, but also on the mental and emotional disgust thrown towards the innocent animals. “The cruelty is hard to deny – and the outrage hard to squelch – now that advocates have brought this reality into public discussion” (615).

Growing up, I never realized that the meat that was nourishing my body could have been abused and tortured for my benefit. I do believe that many animals were created in order to fulfill their task in the cycle and energy flow of life. Snakes eat mice, so too, will humans eat cows or chickens. According to Jonathan Safran Froer, “to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming” and “ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed” (599). Simply because we eat animals, does not mean that we also must be ignorant about where and who they came from. I feel that as a species with the ability to make complex decisions, it is our responsibility to step forward and protect the lives of animals before they are killed to nurture our own bodies. They deserve the dignity of living without abuse before they must die.

http://blogs.greenpeace.ca/?cat=9&paged=3

http://www.thylazine.org/gallery/mules/

http://erinbrennan.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/the-hidden-link-between-factory-farms-and-human-illness/

Animane

2010-02-15T11:13:00.001-08:00

To be humane is to encompass “such behaviour or disposition towards others as befits a man…a gentle or kindly in demeanour or action” (183). Is the word humane not a contradictory statement when it is a human quality to be sadistic and when humans define passion as “an intense desire or enthusiams… relating to physical suffering and pain” (186)? Sadism, a human enthusiasm for inflicting pain, suffering or humiliation on others” is a paradigm leading me to believe that the word humane may be more fitting to be renamed animane (201). An experiment testing the levels of compassion amongst monkeys, the subject monkeys were “fed only if they agreed to pull a chain that would send a painful shock to another monkey….after seeing the repercussions of their actions” a mere 87% of the monkeys continued to eat, knowing that if they did they would inflict pain on an innocent monkey (201).

One humane monkey did not eat for 14 days, refusing to harm his fellow equal. In an experiment testing guard and prisoner personality traits affecting abusive prison situations, but ultimately resulting in observing human compassion and sadistic tendencies, a similar option was given as was given to the monkeys: one may please themselves, in effect hurting others or one may not fulfill his own desires, but instead allow another to benefit by not having pain inflicted upon them. This experiment, performed at Stanford University by lead investigator Philip Zimbardo, included the involvement of 72 students with no history of instability of mental illness. 12 of the students were assigned to be guards while the other 12 were assigned to act as prisoners in a pseudo high-profile prison for two weeks. Although student “guards” were instructed not to inflict any physical pain on the “prisoners”, they were given permission to be verbally abusive and demeaning to the “prisoners” (204). The study had to be cut short at 6 days in because it was observed that the “guards” were taking on sadistic tendencies, taking pleasure in inflicting pain upon the “prisoners” while the “prisoners” were showing signs of mental instability and psychological unsoundness in response to the way that the “guards” were handling their new place of power. “In general, what [this experiment] leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation, [the guards] will have all the power and the [prisoners] will have none…[this experiment was a possible reflection of] the danger which lurks in the darker side of human nature” (203).

Drawing from the comparison of these two studies, it is clear that between the monkeys and the humans, the monkeys are the more humane of the two in that they show “consideration for the needs and distresses of others” while the humans show no sign of humanity or “character of being humane” (183). According to Greg Garrard, author of Ecocriticism, “humans can both be, and be compared to, animals” (171). In instances such as this prison experiment, I would interpret this belief differently than the way that it is impressed. Rather than having the connotation of the thin line between the similarities amongst animals and humans, I would argue that this may have a negative connotation in that humans can be “a brute, or beast, distinguished from man”, that humans can act as inhumane as a wild animal stalking his prey (181).

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2268.htm

http://dericbownds.net/uploaded_images/MacaqueMonkey.jpg

http://api.ning.com/files/Ij2-798Cl6ABEO3t0-YwoxJx*WvrIavVBhreKF8LJJkEqCL2d8-HMOu8-dPhpFWEzp0xYI4o6A*EYS74ItEgwUB4E9TQM560/compassion.jpg

Gregariously Graceful

2010-02-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

Gregariously Graceful

Link above to view

2010-02-10T20:57:00.000-08:00

Mind versus Moral

2010-02-08T17:32:00.001-08:00

In 388 B.C, Aristophanes said “A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers“(2). What does it mean to prosper? How can the state of being prosperous be defined to the extent to which it identifies someone’s home? Throughout the history of text, a home is a place where your loved ones are, a place of security. Home is being surrounded by the familiar and is a comfortable place to return to after an exhausting journey. As a college student, I watch as people come to Austin, leaving their home behind. Rather than being homesick, most University of Texas students quickly make Austin their new home. In this sense of the word “home”, the unfamiliar, the place of insecurity and a place away from your loved ones. This definition completely contradicts the initial definition of home. Many humans would agree with Herman Melville that “life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound” because wherever life takes you will become your home (2). Yes, everyone comes from somewhere, but due to everyone’s differing circumstances, it is thought to be essential to adapt and remake “home” wherever it comes easiest to you (2). One of the absolute most distinguishable differences between humans and animals is that they are simple and we are, well, complicated to say the least.

“A pair of wrens will build their nest year after year in a certain box. A she-wolf…will litter time after time in one particular cave….all kinds of cattle..have strong attachments to their accustomed home” (J.Frank Dobie, The Longhorn 292). For an animal, home is one, never-changing place. A home for an animal is their “querencia…it denotes not only the haunt, the lair, the stomping ground of animals, but their place-preference for certain functions” (317).

Treating animals as if they were humans would be one of the biggest mistakes a person could make. Barring the anatomical differences, humans and animals think completely differently and are therefore on completely different levels as species. This is not to say that one is better than the other, nor that one is entitled to make worse or end a life for another. Hemingway’s Death in The Afternoon focuses around the nature of acceptable standards versus morality and passion. “A bullfight is very moral to me because I feel very fine while it is going on and have a feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality, and after it is over I feel very sad but very fine” (703). Not only does the bull not consider factors of morality or right and wrong, he also does not get the opportunity to do so. The capacity of animal minds against human minds is like comparing the size of an ant to an elephant; they are made and function completely differently. But does this difference give humans automatic permission to do what they want with the animals of their choosing? No. According to Hemingway, “the bullfighter…has ability to do extraordinary things with the bull” and that he can do these things because he, as a human, has the upper hand in knowledge and motility (Hemingway 12). Hemingway’s moral standards feel okay with entertainment at the expense of another living thing, simply because he does not feel bad as a viewer. Would he commit to this same attitude if the game was at the expense of humans, rather than at the expense of the bull? Unlikely. In regards to the mustang, Dobie tells his readers that “no one who conceives him as only a potential servant to man can apprehend the mustang” (Dobie 314). The vast differences between humans and animals cannot lead to the presumption that humans can take or dispose of animals as they wish. A single person’s moral standards ought to be measured up to the simple, forgiving standards of an animal – perhaps this would lead to more just decisions regarding a life other than your own.

1) Dowden. "Phil. 153 Mind." Spring 2008. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2006. .

2) "Home quotes." Find the famous quotes you need, ThinkExist.com Quotations.. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2010. .

3) "Horse retirement home | Retirement livery | Polcoverack Farm Cornwall." Horse retirement home | Retirement livery | Polcoverack Farm Cornwall. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2010. .

Contradicting Similarities

2010-01-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

Genesis chapter 2 verse 15 says, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” [5]. Eden was a place of beauty and wonder of which Adam was allocated to care for it and the plants and animals around it. Just as this God placed man in the Garden of Eden, Black Elk Speaks conceptualizes the idea that Black Elk had been positioned by h

is six grandfathers, “the Powers of the World” to have the powers to “make live…and to destroy” amongst the earth (221). left photo [2].

above photo [1]

This photo of the Garden of Eden was of particular interest to me because it asserts itself as a reminder that thunder and lightening are not meant to be a negative aspect of nature, but rather as beautiful through the light that it brings to the world and through the natural speaking of the earth to its inhabitants. Thunder was a constant character throughout Black Elk’s recollection of memories. Thunder was more ceaseless than any human character introduced. Thunder is not only a powerful, dependable source to Black Elk, but it sustains the people’s, the animals’ and plant’s physical selves. “Thunder beings live to send [the people] rain” which is inevitably necessary to sustain life (217). In addition to thunder being a necessity to survive, it also served Black Elk as a leader. As Black Elk’s Great Vision was coming to an end, all of the Powers of the World had left him except the “little cloud that bore me…and in them thunder beings lived and leaped and flashed” (219). Thunder in nature may come appear as terrifying and sudden, similar to Black Elk’s Great Vision, yet each of these has hidden beauty within its terror. “It was beautiful, but it was also terrible…they looked beautiful; but they looked fearful too” (225, 231).

Pebbled throughout Black Elk Speaks were contradicting ideas, which lead me to be suspect of Black Elk’s lack of confidence as the chosen one of his grandfathers. Although the Great vision was layered with a melody of different colors, each bound to a different meaning and purpose, “a rainbow was the open door of it” (220). A mosaic of colors was the door to the great vision. Although each color within the vision had its own role, it took the collaboration of all colors to make the vision complete. “And while I was crying, something was coming from the south. It looked like dust far off, but when it came closer, I saw it was a cloud of beautiful butterflies of all colors” (239). Deception of the many colors of the butterflies mirrors the misinterpretation of thunder and of Black Elk’s vision. According to David’s Butterflies & Moths, “Mimicry is the ability to appear to be or to imitate something other than what you really are” [4]. Mimicry is deception at its finest.

What may seem terrifying and unknown is actually welcoming, when the unknown is familiarized. right photo [3]

[1] "Brunswick County 4-H."Brunswick County 4-H. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2010. http://brunswick4h.files.wordp.htm.

[2] Davies, Geoffrey. "2009 July « Brunswick County 4-H."Brunswick County 4-H. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2010. http://brunswick4h.wordpress.htm.

[3] Prior, David . "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder... on Flickr - Photo Sharing!." Flickr - Photo Sharing. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2010.

[4] S, David. "David's Butterflies and Moths." Home.cogeco.ca . N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2010. .

[5] Zondervan. NIV Bible. New Ed ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1987. Print.