LOVING ANIMALS

[Guest guest]

Loving Animals

by Eduardo Lamazon*

 

Life for most animals can hardly be described as such. That is, it early on

ceases to be life in the greater sense of the term, quickly devolving into an

intense pain that serves as punishment for going along with a human coexistence

that is entirely out of their control.

 

These non-human animals, as propriety should coerce us into calling them, are

marvelous creatures whose tendency towards both aesthetic and mechanical

perfection is commonplace, yet whose defenses against our species?incorrigibly

vitriolic means of predation sadly do not follow suit.

 

There are those who posit reason as the singular quality of distinction

between humans and animals. However, for those so quick to call upon the

comparatively larger frontal lobes we possess, the counter response should both

flatter and offend such a narrow-minded sensibility: ‘HHow? we should ask, ‘dHow

we come to use this more refined calculating potential, not solely in relation

to our admitted inferiors, but also as regards our unscrupulous method of

understanding our own everyday actions??

One need dig no deeper in search of the motivations behind those who regard

their claim to life as more valid than other beings ?ignorance and confusion

will do just fine. If we are indeed superior beings, then is there not a moral

imperative implied in such a privileged position? The very fact of this

disproportional advantage lends a grave tone to the relationship at large. In

Hamlet, Shakespeare proved prophetic: “there is nothing either good or bad, but

thinking makes it so.? We ?not our dogs ?think; and it is through this thought

that we acquire both the privilege and the burden of responsibility over this

relationship.

 

Yet it is principally through degrading metaphor that our relationship with

beasts exists: “Yyou animal [ox, pig, turkey].? Why not, you are a foolish man!?

or you’rare a selfish woman!?

I am a miserable worm, Nietzsche claimed as the syphilis slowly ravaged his

body and his self-fashioning made the quiet turn from metaphysics to incest,

mother and sister in suit. True, there is many a fault to be found in

Nietzsche; but what fault, we might ask, is there in the worm?

 

The 20th century was generous and acquisitive, abating and lethal, rewarding

for science, regressive for the coexistence of men. Towards its close, a

glimmer of acknowledgment for animal rights in civilized societies belatedly

came to shine. Only a glimmer, to be sure; nothing more ?though admittedly more

promising a sign than a shadow.

 

In ancient Greece, human rights were the rights of free male citizens. Women

and slaves were as insignificant then as animals in soulless, primitive cultures

are now. History knows of many another form of discrimination, equally abject

and shameful. Burning the heretic on the pyre was once of the norm - until,

that is, civilizing principles made shame of it.

 

It is all a matter of time. There will come a day when the irrational

extermination of the non-human animals of our age, in nearly every society, will

be the subject of museum exhibitions, to the surefire consternation and

incredulity of visitors.

 

I have some bad news for the proud superior beings that, in haplessly

pejorative voice, call them beasts (beasts?) biomedical findings show, beyond

any doubt, that our genetic patrimony is 97% identical to that of gorillas. And

if this is not a humiliating enough discovery (for the gorillas, of course), it

has also been found that the number of genes needed to create a man is only

double that needed to create a worm.

 

Life is, even for science, the grandest of miracles, a truth largely ignored

by most everyman whose contribution is more of a potpourri consisting of

tree-chopping, species-eradicating, air and water-polluting, and

disease-spreading. It is man, amongst all life forms, that has the gift of

stubbornness.

 

Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian ethologist, the great genius of last century who

in 1973 was awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine, said: “man has always been

pretty stupid, but I have noticed a change recently " for the worse " . This is the

same gentle doctor who loved animals to the core and who also said: “wWhen I

think that my dog loves me more than I love him, I feel embarrassed.?

Lord Byron wrote the following as epitaph for his dog, Boatswain: “NNear this

spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity,

strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man

without his vices.

Animals, be they wild or domestic, are, as any engagement with intelligence

clearly demonstrates, our traveling companions. Their sacrifice or valueless

suffering are acts of immorality and represent the most degrading of barbarisms

for those who provoke them.

 

Why love them?

 

A simple philosophical maxim tells us that it is correct to prefer a state

wherein things are better as opposed to one wherein they are worse.

 

Decoded, and applied in everyday terms, self-respect. Care for other forms of

life, to be sure, retains an implicit self-improving quality. Because the

expansive is primitive and inhibition is culture. For compassion, that it is a

lofty and forgotten emotion. Because to kill or to make suffer is destruction.

Because to build is to participate as an omnipotent God in the act of creation.

Because he who is productive or good or civilized lives in accordance with

certain values, and there are no values that justify cruelty. Because

intelligence invites us to live in such a way that our actions benefit the

happiness and not the pain in the world. Because offering life and not death

can’t be out-of-date, unless everything is inevitably lost. Because I’mam sure

you understand the difference in sensibility between one who kills an animal for

pleasure, and one who satisfies his pleasure-seeking by listening to Beethoven's

fifth.

 

A bull-fighting lover once told me that the bulls they use for the fight would

never even be born were it not for that primitive obscenity we call the

carnival, “bBecause they are bred specifically for a death in the plaza, he

argued; to which I responded that, using his criteria, we might well justify the

breeding of babies for slaughter before some fifty-thousand paying customers.

 

Since Plato we know that to educate is to train through virtue. Mercy,

compassion, love for all beings, respect for difference ?all are achievements of

moderate man, of propriety, and also of superiority. Superiority not in the

sense of bettering oneself over others, but rather the capacity to improve

oneself for one's own sake, to evolve from that small, unpolished object of

birth into something significant and unfettered.

 

Why, in relation to man, is it commonplace to think of animals as inferior

species? Why is it that they do not possess some of man’s foremost virtues? A

few come to mind: hate, wickedness, envy, vengeance, bitterness, deceit,

treachery, arrogance.

 

All animals, human and non, die once the corporeal apparatuses driving them

cease to function. Cruel people, however, die much sooner, even if they fail to

notice.

 

* mexican writer

translation from Spanish: Paul Moreno