Three snippets … moving beyond the horizon of homocentrism

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Three snippets from my essay “What is an animal and what is a human?”

“We can ask if the interpretations of the characteristics, that are considered to make up the marking dividers within a human-animal hierarchy, are in reality a negation of the autonomous value of otherness in nonhuman animals.”

“We know that the single criterion [against which we measure anything nonhuman animals do] that serves as our standard, is the human parameter, i.e. the human model counts as the ideal, as the standard, for creating norms. So what happens if we put this standard of measurement into doubt?”

“Biology has already determined what the identity of nonhuman animals is, and even the Animal Rights movement has satisfied itself with placing the moral question somewhere out of reach by accepting the explanation of the identity of animals as something strictly biological.”

The image on the left is severely speciesist. I still can not really fathom why some feminists make that comparison between the “treatment” or I guess rather objectification of women in advertisement etc. with “meat”. Meat is a solely speciesist problem, I expanded a bit on this critique / controversial aspect at this location: http://simorgh.de/niceswine/feminism-and-animal-rights

It’s a PDF, check it ! http://www.veganswines.com/superfiles/horizon_of_homocentrism.pdf

Speciesism isn’t …

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Speciesism isn’t like something that has to be assumed like a “status quo” that we are just condemned to be living with for ever. Speciesism is always an almost inexplicable disaster for which we lack any real terms to fathom that what is happening.

It’s not an issue that’s less pressing than violations of human rights.

Even if Animal Rights are not legally pronounced anywhere in our homocentrist human societies now, the world consists of an autonomous natural world too (in a parallell form) of which nonhuman animals are the inhabitants and nonhuman animals are rights bearers in the vital positions they hold in the environment /nature.

Our manipulative and destructive mingling in their matters does not change anything about the animal-nature connection – which is far more fundamental than our conceptions of might and force are, which we have set against them.

My friend ‘Comet’ adds rightly: “The entire existence of humanity is not something that goes “way back” as far as the universe and its age is concerned. So all of humanity from the start until now – although “ages and ages” to humanity – is still a catastrophic event in the eyes of the universe, as much as Nazi Germany was a catastrophic event to humans. So one can look at the whole of humanity and say ‘that event went totally wrong, time to start over ‘”.

Animal Rights: why there is a similar concern for establishing them alongside human rights

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Hello friend: if you read this post or look at it, make sure you have a look and this tumblr entry too. Please talk with your friends about the atrocities of animal sacrifices,be they for religious craziness or for whatever … http://niceswine.tumblr.com/post/12614331791/i-heard-about-the-killing-of-camels

Animal Rights: why there is a similar concern for establishing them alongside human rights

What do you feel are your rights dependent upon? The first instance when you learn about how important it is that you have rights is as a child. If you don’t have rights, anybody might marginalize you because you are weaker than them. Other humans can be in that negative sense the “stronger” ones, that they can potentially just violate the integrity of your individuality completely.

Your rights depend on the basis that the social context amongst which you live shows respect towards you, and accepts that you are weaker in some sense. Additionally the social context around you must leave you the space to “fulfil yourself” to a meaningful (for yourself) and reasonable extent.

Rights have basic social patterns which they require, in order to function “organically” almost. And even more, rights require in their social context and embedding a broader frame of fundamentals. Within this “frame of fundamentals” you will find the entire environmental contexts – nonhuman animals included at the forefront.

The environment is not something passive that is born out of causalities that started off with a big bang universe theory … and nonhuman animals are not the biological instinct bearers as the natural scientists might want to explain them in an oversimplified yet extraordinarily body-centred way. When we make assumptions about what is important in the assumed “instinctual life of an animal”, we just put our assumptions about the animal’s priorities right over them like a cloak under which the real animal will not become to be seen. When I understand that some bird species does some specific singing because he/she wants to mate, then I assume that is what is happening, but I should not claim my assumption to be mirroring the truth of the nonhuman animal. That what is not understood, what remains a world not fully understood by me, can still be a measuring standard in it’s own terms, even if outside my cognitive grasps reach.

Overall, the habitat in which we live is way too complex to be described in solely logical terms, even. On the irrational side yet again, that what we can see in nature is what religions have “sterilized” by setting against natures own (incomprehensive) complexity their single mighty god/divine concepts, as some all inclusive surrogates – with hidden features like a human miracle- producing brain that creates the world and universe and so on. In real life we all have a direct connection to the grandiosity of nature though, that basically totally independent of any prescribed views on it. After all we are part of this universe too. In our singularity. As lonesome single beings.

To come back to where I initially started, animal- and humans rights need each other to go hand in hand, because if we separate our desired rights as superior to what we might only see as the “needs” of animals, then we should ask ourselves: on which planet do we live and with whom are we dealing here? If we will stay and head into a prolonged thinking of us as the centre of the universe, then we will isolate our capacities of thinking and feeling to a perversely narrow circle of ourselves reflecting just what we want to see.

Where do you draw the line, when asking others to act up – ethically?!

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Where do you draw the line, when asking others to act up – ethically?!

chatty <3

I often wonder myself about what i can ask of others and what i can ask of myself, as when it comes to: what’s ethically ok, what can we do, and what is asked too much for most people (and even understandably asked too much?).

I don’t want to imply in any way with what I am saying here, that the “do whatever you want to” approach would be a recommendable path to seek in our daily practiced ethics.

What I mainly find worth highlighting in the context is this:

How about letting others down who really need my help and I could help them? Ok many of us would think I am talking about things relating to friends and family. but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is – extend your circle: helping “strangers”.

It shouldn’t be provocative to ask, my question is: is having ones “own” kids a form of letting “others” down by denying the “others” the support I could give them if I instead would chose to feel responsible just as much for them as I would for my own kids?

The other day I heard a fellow vegan talk about vegans who don’t care if exploitative “cheap” labor or any oppressive means were involved in the production process of vegan produce bought, that a vegan person’s care should ideally reach out to the questions of human rights inasmuch. This of course is an undeniably important critical point to bring up. Also this vegan person highlighted the need of a stronger awareness in the fields of veganism and environmentalism and how these two go together, and finally she briefly discussed the importance of making your kids aware of speciesism.

Thinking about vegan parenting made me think of the dilemma everybody of us faces when confronted with the decision: my life as how i would (possibly) want it for myself (having kids) or what about the kids that are born but who really don’t have much of a chance in the world for how we all are setting this world up anew every day.

I’ve taken the decision now. I don’t feel extravagant for having decided to put all my support into helping other’s kids,  nonhuman and human alike, primarily.


 

Please sign this petition for the political prisoner Mohammadreza Pourshajari ( Siamak Mehr ,the writers pseudonym ) – Iranian Author

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http://bit.ly/siamak_mehr (short link)
Please sign this petition
Bitte unterzeichnen Sie diese Petition
مهرورزیده این درخواست‌ نامه را دستینه بفرمائید
Please sign this petition for the political prisoner Mohammadreza Pourshajari ( Siamak Mehr , the writers pseudonym ) – Iranian author
Please follow this link

Cardinals Rally Squirrel, what about your rights?

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cardinals, squirrel tails, animal rights, baseball, saint louis

Cardinals Rally Squirrel

People in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, are supposedly wearing real squirrel tails on their baseball hats to support their team, the Cardinals, or even to support charity alongside with that since the tails are marketed for that purpose too, ever since recently a squirrel ran over the play field and the idea came up for the crowd to have a or this squirrel as a mascot.

Obviously the hoard of fans are (like in many cases where animals are involved in such circumstances) unreasonable enough to not care about wildlife, nonhuman animal well being and nonhuman animal life. They seem to see squirrels as something like a “cute pest” which sounds oxymoronic, but that would explain why on one hand they like squirrels but on the other hand they like them dead too at the same time, so that they can stick the animals’ tails to their baseball hats?

A friend from STL says “On the Channel 2 news, Mandy Murphy, stressed : “… and those are *real* Squirrel tails !” While footage of a huge crowd at the stadium was being shown. As if that was something good. I’m not sure now if what Mandy Murphy said was accurate or not. I assumed they were fake before I heard her say that. I think the original Rally Squirrel was set free, if I heard correctly. I know that some people are eager to involve real dead Squirrels, see : Taxidermist Hops on Rally Squirrel Bandwagon.”

It’s more than a shame that Tony La Russa, the Cardinals manager, who is an avid animal welfare advocate, see his foundation: http://www.arf.net , is maybe something like a speciesist by not saying anything against the squirrel craze if it leads to using dead squirrel parts to promote his team and charity work connected with baseball.

* WHY was it possible to sneak dead animal parts into the craze if people were considerate about the actual animals? “When we heard the squirrel merchandise had sold out so quickly, we went to our backup supplier, ebay. Somebody was selling Rally Squirrel earrings, an RS Christmas ornament, and tee shirts. But one guy who is a taxidermist was selling a real stuffed squirrel on which he has mounted a little plastic red cap so that you can have your very own (stuffed) rally squirrel. Bidding already had reached $84.99 when we checked yesterday morning.” St. Louis gets squirrelly

* ALSO what does this suggest ? : ‘ [...] … customer’s request for “five-hundred squirrel tails”. Not full costumes, just the tails – apparently for use during the Cards’ upcoming home games against Milwaukee this week in the National League Championship Series. “We can help him out,” Brock quickly pointed out. “But it’s not an item that anybody manufactures. You can’t go out and find a squirrel tail company.” ” Johnnie Brock’s Sells Out Of Squirrel Costumes

Does life have to be tragic?

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Does life have to be tragic?

Certainly people create situations for each other as human beings, but far more than that even for other, nonhuman animal beings and the natural world and the world as a whole, situations which can’t even be hardly fathomed anymore by a word such as “tragic”, situations which leave the one who experiences them horrified and terrified, sad to the highest extent.

“Tragic” is something personal, something that can’t be really located in the broad and politically relevant context, when it refers to the experience of an individual.

No matter what though, we all do suffer from tragic fates, caused by the impacts humans create.

How do we handle our personal tragic experiences, and not let ourselves be emotionally drowned by the bad experiences and thus by others causing such feelings in us?

I think it’s important that we connect that what happens to us personally (I mean on the very private and personal scale) to that what happens in the world and with the world overall. Our personal tragedy is caused by humans who ignore that their lifestyles in all aspects (the ideas the propagate, their behavior, the practical impacts of their doings and their “havings”) affect the actual life of single individuals on really all possible scales.

Humans in the western world on average seek to rationalize their lifestyle by terms such as what is “in” and what “I should have” / own / possess, what is “normal”, what should be everybody’s standard, what is it that “I like”, that “I want”, that I “need”.

The question about the broad “you” is not interesting and even a no no. One simply works against it. The “you” is something like an opposing principle.

We need this “you” to live though! But we should be aware not to reduce it to be a fake “you”, which would consist just of clones of ourselves. It’s a matter of perspective. There is a difference between a collective egotism and an individualist “concernism” or altruism.

Tragedy hinders us from connecting to the other, we become locked within the perspective of the “I” involuntarily. But as we can’t share the feelings of an egotist who causes us to feel tragic in the first place, we end up suffering from the separation we feel between a locked “I” and an out-locked “you”.

Let’s break out of the locked “I” condition when we feel our tragedy, and let’s always see that we are connected with the many “you’s”.

 


on the multiplicity of meaningfulness

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A concern is a concern, and should and can be “of concern” / “something that concerns one”, even if it’s not a concern to many people.

An issue is of importance, even if that issue is not a story that makes the headlines. We get easily drawn into the streams (!) of uniform opinions, thoughts and feelings, when one issue is played up and stands on the main menu of “today’s top stories”. We easily lose out of sight that our individual thinking and actions need more independence and that our thinking and actions should not be a play-ball of the “moods of the masses”.

When our own individual thinking becomes only a part of one big uniform stream of opinions (that heads just in the one “either-or” direction), our existence shrinks to a binary reducedness. We could end up being one of those “zombies” that we run into every day. Those type of people that are straight one of the stupid or one of the smart side. Life however goes beyond us being stupid or smart, I think life is so complex that leaving all our doors of perception open to what we can learn from it, requires us to allow a full multiplicity of a meaningfulness that does cover more than just our own “insight/s of humanity”. We need an outlook onto all concerns. Beyond homocentrism.

 

a linoleum print by Farangis G. Yegane

animal rights pornography – definition

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animal rights porn – definition

A corporate advertisement that extols the company’s ethically motivated animal rights or animal protection measures taken, their record or policies – usually by a company known to rape and pillage nonhuman animal concerns as thoroughly as possible.

A: Have you seen those new campaign targets by the PETA, that show how easily “animal friendly” can become a swear word?

B: They are pure AR porn, man.

or rather

A: Have you seen PETAs recent campaign for animals?

B: Don’t fall for that! Check their policies on euthanasia.

ar-pornography animal rights pornography, considerate about nonhumanbeings interests washing

Ok maybe peta makes an animal rights porn site to try to ridiculously cover up that fact that they are animal rights porn.

You can’t call a lip service “help”, you can’t even call a an action “help”, when all the “help” you think you are giving is undone by the next steps you are taking. … And that even routinely in the case of peta and their active euthanasia of nonhuman animals. Also, their campaigns cater to an anti AR rethoric and only thus gain a lot of support from the people loyal to them, who helplessly “bark upon the wrong tree”. If people don’t see that being for or against animal rights is not a matter of belonging to a certain group, but that it’s actually actions and opinions that matter, then those people can rightly be called ethically short sighted.

Der Unterschied zwischen dem zoroastrischen und dem mithraischen Urrind …

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Der Unterschied zwischen dem zoroastrischen und dem mithraischen Urrind ist der folgende: 1. Das zoroastrische Urrind wird von Angra Mainyu (Ahriman) tödlich verletzt. Das Ziel Ahrimans ist es, das Leben in der Welt zu vernichten. Arthas Samen aber sind immer siegreich (Pirooz), da sie die Kraft haben sich immer wieder zu erneuern. So sind alle Bemühungen Angra Mainyus umsonst und aus allen Teilen des Rindes (das mit „Parvins Ähre“ / خوشه پروین  gleichgesetzt ist) entsteht von neuem Wachstum durch die Absorption des Wassers, das in dem neben ihm gelegen Fluss, dem Flusse Veh Daiti, fliesst (das Urrind erfährt eine neue Frischwerdung = Frashgart).

Im Mithraismis ist Mithras der Schöpfer durch seinen Dolch, indem er damit die Ader der Urrindes durchschneidet. Hier fehlt die Darstellung des Flusses. Und an die Stelle des Prozesses der Wiederauferstehung tritt der Akt des Durchtrennens der Lebensadern des All-Lebens durch den Gott Mithras mit dem Dolch. Mit dem Schnitt in die Blutadern bewirkt Mithras die vermeintliche Wiederauferstehung (Frashgart) des Lebens. Wasser kann man nicht zerschneiden oder durchtrennen, aber die Adern durch die das Blut fließt (die man auch als einen „Fluss“ verstand) konnten durchtrennt werden. Die Ader war identisch mit der Gottheit Artha. Durch die Opferung findet im Mithraismus die Erneuerung statt, und mit der gewaltsamen Unterbrechung der Lebensadern entsteht der Gedanke des Bündnisses (Mitre) und tritt an die Stelle der Liebe (Mehr).

Aus Hintergründe des Mithraismus und seiner persischen Wurzeln, M. Jamali und G. Yegane Arani-May, z. Zt. in Bearbeitung.

( Tagged as: Geush Urvan, the primeval bull in Zoroastrianism and his/her counterpart in Mithraism )

Frau neben toten Tier …

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Frau neben toten Tier …

Es macht einen wütend, und ja, selbst als Tierrechtler fühlt man sich sogar gegenüber anderen Tierrechlern all zu oft als so eine Art Wutbürger.

Wieso zeigt dieses Buchcover:

einen nackten Leib ausschnittsweise von einer Frau montiert neben dem toten Körper eines Vogels? Wieso haben die Autorinnen – die sich alle samt für Tierrrechte in der einen oder anderen Weise engagieren – nicht gegen solch ein Cover protestiert? Fragwürdig allerding ist überhaupt die Gleichsetzung von Frau-Sein und dem als Tier zum Opfer werden.Frauen sind auch Mittäterinnen was den Speziesismus anbelangt. Ein Bekenntnis gegen den Speziesismus von weiblicehr Seite hebt diese Mitschuld nicht auf. Die Zeit des Kollektivfeminusmus als fortschrittliche Idee scheint nun doch schon lange vorbei zu sein.

Würde man ein Bild im Sinne einer dokumentarisch wertvollen oder aussagekräftigen Quelle auf solch einem Cover verwenden, so würde das ethisch einwandfrei wirken. Oder aber man sollte eine Abstraktion verwenden, wenn man solch eine Gegenüberstellung veranschalichen will. Hier aber eine Fotomontage so mir nich dir nicht zu liefern, beweist bei solchen fotografischen Inhalten moralische abgestumpftheit. So was sollte nicht unhinterfragt durchgehen und unauffällig unter den Tisch fallen. Das tote Tier ist keine lebendige Frau.

The question is really who should we be considerate about: women are victims of their own socialization, but animals are in the first place excluded from our moral and ethical frames of reference.

Society is politics, but only as what regards their political philosophy

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Society is politics, but only as what regards their political philosophy

The private is a chaotic raw base (a necessary, “natural” base). It can be described with psychological terms in the singular and sociological terms in the plural of humanity.

The political sphere needs philosophy, ethics and concepts. It seeks a basis of reason upon which different single individuals can agree.

The sociological just takes people as “how they are”, no matter what their ethical ideals could turn them into on the longer run, whereas the political perspective on society gives society a reason.

The private finds its full potential only when it becomes aware of it’s own ability to create reason, embeds it in a frame of organization that is set as a potential ideal.

Then, even if a person never lives under politically reasonable conditions, the aspiration itself, phrased, thought or practiced on the small scale by the thinking individual, creates a political meaningfulness.

MEANINGFULNESS, that is: One in which the single individual steps out of it own concern onward to show responsibility towards its entire contextualities – regarding nonhuman animals, the natural environment and human beings.

 

The Parallel, fragment about the position humans take towards “nature”

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The Parallel, fragment about the position humans take towards “nature”

The homocentrical human considers himself to be in a parallel position to the other natural phenomenons. Nature is felt as if merely producing itself out of an almost passive condition, nature is seen as a huge complex of causalities with interlocked phenomena.

The subsumation: “nature” stands in homocentrist terms for something passive, “nature” has been banned into a virtual state of a “meaningwise” non-existence, while the idea of “the human” is thought to exclusively represent a comprehensive awareness and meaningfulness.

There is an imaginary parallel condition, and on one hand you have the so called passive “natural world” and on the other hand you have the so called “aware” human state of being.

That means in other words that what is external to the human state of being, is localised and being put into the dimension of standing in opposition, in a specific type of way. This type of way is most easily to be compared with the parallel: THE PARALLEL STANDS IN RELATION BUT WITHOUT AN INTERCHANGING (DIRECT) CONNECTION.

A parallel, which represents an ideal circumstance for measuring the one side to the other, seen from the perspective of denying the existence of the others by classifying everything except the “self-concept” as being relatively narrow in function. That what is other, is not simple enough to be fit into the simplicity of the system of homocentricity. The reality of Animals and the Nature is too complex – obviously.

This also means, a highly complex form is subjugated to being translated into the simplifying procedure of scientific proof, to then be considered as a bit more important on its side of the parallel. The complexity remains on its side of the parallel, and cannot jump the line, but can increase in meaning alone by its being existent in the same dimension as the human being is.

The separation, that the parallel creates, stands in dependence of the understanding of “self” (the self-concept), since nothing else would be able as effectively to banish the one immediate reality, that could threaten to run into the acts of definition, human inductions and deductions.
THE REAL could end up dissolving the homocentrical tendency for creating determinisms … .