Category Archives: the society as such is passe

From: Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, The Entrails of Power …

Posted on by PalangL

Eating, crushing, as a form of wielding power over other living beings … Elias Canetti in ‘Crowds and Power’ pp. 210-211:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/79014916/Canetti-Crowds-and-Power (link open in new window)

I don’t agree with much of Canetti’s view on nonhuman animal behaviour in this nevertheless excellent piece of work of his. However, these thoughts about the ingestion of flesh as an act of wielding power over another animals life, are unique.

Another of his thoughts about human domination over nonhuman animals in the same publication is noteworthy too:

The Entrails of Power: ‘ …But even more than fear or rage, it is contempt which urges him to crush it. An insect, something so small that it scarcely counts, is crushed because one would not otherwise know what had happened to it; no human hand can form a hollow small enough for it. But, in addition to the desire to get rid of a pest and to be sure it is really disposed of, our behaviour to a gnat or a flea betrays the contempt we feel for a being which is utterly defenseless, which exists in a completely different order of size and power from us, with which we have nothing in common, into which we never transform ourselves and which we never fear except when it suddenly appears in crowds. The destruction of these tiny creatures is the only act of violence which remains unpunished even within us. Their blood does not stain our hands, for it does not remind us of our own. We never look into their glazing eyes. We do not eat them. They have never – at least not amongst us in the West – had the benefit of our growing, if not yet very effective, concern for life. In brief, they are outlaws. If I say to someone, ‘I could crush you with one hand,’ I am expressing the greatest possible contempt. It is as though I were saying: ‘You are an insect. You mean nothing to me. I can do what I like with you and that won’t mean anything to me either. You mean nothing to anyone. You can be destroyed with impunity without anyone noticing. It would make no difference to anyone. Certainly not to me.’

Aus dem Vegan*Swines Reader IV (2012): Der Mythos der „humanen“ Art der Ausbeutung und Tötung von Tieren

Posted on by PalangL

Der Mythos der „humanen“ Art der Ausbeutung und Tötung von Tieren

Diese Informationen basiert auf Erfahrungswerten von Tierrettungs- bzw. schutzhöfen und den Recherchen bekannter Tierrechts- bzw. schutzorganisationen. Die Angaben beziehen sich auf die Realität in westeuropäischen und US-amerikanischen Agrarbetrieben.

Eine „humane“ Umgehensweise sollte eigentlich bedeuten, mit Respekt und Einfühlungsvermögen mit den Lebewesen umzugehen, die auf unsere Hilfe angewiesen sind. Es ist egal, ob es dabei um Menschen oder um Tiere geht. Das, was wir genau unter „humanen“, also menschlichen Werten verstehen, läßt darauf zurückschließen, auf welchem Level sich der gegenwärtige Aufgeklärtheitsstatus unserer Kultur befindet.

Würden wir die gleichen Methoden, die wir in der Aufzucht, Versorgung, und Tötung von Farmtieren praktizieren, auf unsere Haustiere anwenden, dann wäre das gesetzeswidrig und jeder normale Mensch würde so eine Behandlungsweise von Tieren als erschreckend und grausam empfinden … diesen Text als PDF lesen / downloaden (Link öffnet sich in einem neuen Fenster)

Vegan for justice

Posted on by PalangL

Not the plain awareness that “eating meat is wrong”, but a growing sense of justice makes veganism so attractive to people I think.

Ok this is a fine line, but I believe what makes people want to turn vegan now, is not that “by chances” they have been informed about the atrocities going on in farms and slaughterhouses and that more or less right away turns them into vegetarians and/or vegans. I think it’s rather the growing sense of justice as far as nonhuman animals are concerned and the human relationship towards them, that makes people get the “click” of becoming a vegan.

People find it easier to stand for what they feel and think today, in regards to nonhuman animals.

In the past when you thought it was wrong to eat “meat”, etc. the pressure around a person living in a homocentrist society was so strong that someone was confronted with so many more obstacles than the obstacles a persons meets today in most or at least many contexts and places.

The danger of thinking that solely information would almost automatically create a more enlightened and thus hopefully compassionate people all around us, lays in the often overlooked point that many meat eaters and hunters, for example, etc., are acting fully knowing what they are doing and endorsing their fully aware chosen stances publicly wherever they can as individuals “having something to do with the issue” (they feel being asked for their warped views, so much, I think). The same fanaticism about a practiced carnism and speciesism also goes for some people in the field of arts it has to be noted – a professional field that is in much danger of acting on an ideological plane in society anyway and speciesist art is a sad fact that is often being ignored way too much ( speciesism in art : http://www.farangis.de/blog/category/animalistic-issue ).

What I think is important, is that we don’t underestimate the will and the power of the individual person and society overall to foster a sense of justice in each other once the ice is broken that sealed (one could say) “the lips of humanity” in the past.

An e-memorial and about people who simply deny that their harboring speciesist attitudes when you confront them …

Posted on by PalangL

The grave site of Martin Eduard Staudinger, German Animal Rights advocate and anti-vivisectionist. His grave is on the Hauptfriedhof in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He shares a grave site with his grandmother Dorothea Staudinger geb. Behrends.

On a memorial site for the people who lie resting on the Hauptfriedhof his grave is mentioned as:
“146 Grabmal für Martin Eduard Staudinger (1842-1910), Kämpfer gegen die Vivisektion, Gewann C 59” (http://www.bomas.de/buecher/brauchitsch-frankfurt.htm , accessed on the 16.08.12)

The inscription on his tombstone reads:’Im unermüdlichen Kampfe gegen die Vivisektion und für die Rechte der Tiere’ = In the untiresome fight against vivisection and for the rights of animals. (http://ar-civet-cat.blogspot.de/2010/07/martin-eduard-staudinger-1842-1910.html)

People that pretend not to know what speciesism is, and how to deal with them?

Honestly I don’t know yet, I am still trying to find ways … . Have you encountered that problem too: you make a somewhat halfwitted and half-conscious speciesist aware about the fact that you disagree with them making speciesist remarks (when you are around or not directly around on social networks maybe. People like to do it more so when an AR person is somewhere close by, so that a direct verbal argument can start, or so that they can try to ridicule your stance face to face and in public)?

Telling someone that you are against speciesism can be dealt with by a speciesist with a form of denial as a “response”, in which the person just assumes not to know what you’re talking about. Partly anybody is aware of speciesism, partly not. A speciesist is likely (at least in these days still) not fully aware of this -ism that humans direct against the nonhuman animal world (that is, speciesism!). A person might be aware about the conscious degradation of nonhuman animals, but might not consider that as a form of oppression that he or she should take politically serious in a considerate form. So we deal with an ethical blindness in many speciesists.

So how can one address them?

Overall it can be reasonable in the most cases to go ahead and still tell someone what you roughly think about the human-nonhuman relation in our societies in general. On the other hand, when you feel that informing that person won’t lead to any useful effect for the cause, you can just try to ignore their ignorance (!) and just “stand for what you stand” – let them know you are a vegan anti-speciesist, but not argue with them -, because your stance (in thought an action) will have all kinds of effects on your environment anyway.

I’m trying both these approaches anyway.

Fragment … thoughts on what we think are “atrocities”

Posted on by PalangL

Atrocities

We all think we know what atrocities are, and yes we do know – as people, as human beings – what the worst types of atrocities are. However, we fail to acknowledge the full extent of the psychological mindset in humans who cause such actions we consider to be “crimes against humanity” or the murder of an individual or several or many, many human beings.

The type of mindset that likes to destroy others for no reason but for the sake of hatred, is the same type of psyche that picks on any other living being too, in order to rule over it, in life and death.

As humans we have drawn a fence around that what is brutality against the natural world – humans excluded as the only protected and self-declared only species with culture and civilization. And whatever type of atrocities a human does within this spot: “nature”, is ok. We don’t even call that an atrocity then.

Humanity wants to have high moral values, but the basis on which this has to rest is exactly that very basis which destroys moral values. Humanism invented a circle that runs it itself ad absurdum.

Moral values do need a basis, and in reality they have a basis, and that is in the lived relation between human inasmuch and animals. My right as a human, is my right to defend what I perceive to be an animals right inasmuch. So this is my critique about humanism. A.) it fails to be logical as far as ethical reasoning is concerned in general and B.) it won’t allow me to think and act freely as soon as I want to cross the border out of the sterile world of human perspectives and philosophies of life.

Pain

You think you know what segregation means, and what it feels like. But go as a nonhuman animal into any designated human zone (basically every spot in the world), and you know what type of atrocity homocentrism is.

Human are animalcentric in that they focus on a total destructivity towards animals, both willing and unwilling. Animal culture is something human cultures have so much worked against, that being human in itself really is the anti-thesis to animal life. And humans try just so hard to be so very proud of that.

Humans want to emulate animals of prey, but they are just plain humans. We don’t know what the reason culturally is behind the animals of prey hunting other animals. But one thing is for sure, we as humans have another role and potential role. We can either fail and be enemies to the world, or we can see our own role and position made up of own and specific moral participatory values.

I don’t understand why people overall think and act in such highly undifferentiated ways when it comes to their stances on the human-animal relationship, when it comes to thinking about animal life and human life, and life in the universe over all.

However, humans all have to experience their life as own single individual beings, no matter how much they like to or have to hide in the human mass and no matter how much they fail to see the animal individual in what the human world senses to be the plain masses of animal life.

Living life as a single being confronts one with certain inevitable questions of the meaning and the purpose of ones own life. Look at the different meanings people seek out for themselves – all strings run together at a certain spot, and that spot is not to be found in any human-superiorist stratagems.

Never rebut an enlightened anthropos – how dare you!

Posted on by PalangL

Why it is amazing how Animal Rights sets ITSELF on the right fundament. No question that it does exactly that, Animal Rights is a story, dynamic in itself.

However some birthhelpers who are perhaps a couple of eons too late are fighting for their new inventions of the wheel notwithstanding. Ok, what I’m talking about is the question of the futile fight of humans against their own perpetually continued ANTHROPOCENTRISM.

A lot of focus is currently set by the AR community on just that impotant question, which is good and a thing to do overdue because it helps you see reality clearer. Reality about the political implications of Animal Rights for Human Rights and Earth Rights mostly, I believe.

But what exactly is anthropocentrism?

Also … Why is a term chosen that strictly seems to omit the animal nature connection as the KEY point and only focuses on the human towards animal relation in a critical way though. What about that, what completely stands out of the reach of us the anthropos??? Ok, so we see the question at stake here is the perspective, we want to avoid looking at the world from a strictly homocentric viewpoint. But how far do we have to go with that.

I was recently criticised for criticising an AR advocate who is against anthropocentrism and who claims that Animal Rights find a reasonable argument in the similarities between beings – humans and nonhuman animals that is. This is an old string of argumentation when animal acvocacy issues are being discussed. But: do we want to land at comparative studies where we check one brain against the other to find out how much rights you should be entitled to be granted? Well, the amount of speciesism in the enlightened field of AR advocates is just plain tiresome. I just stop this rant at this point and ask you to continue it on your own behalf if you will.

An end to philosophical validity can lie in what we perceive to be reality

Posted on by PalangL

The human continuum with its cultural values is not necessarily one, and can’t necessarily be unified with its diverseness.

Every individual has the right to hold her or his own views.

Thus I can be for Animal Rights INASMUCH as I can be for Human Rights, for example.

No philosophical school can propose me their argumentation as valid IF it asks me to see nonhuman animals other than I see them now as an Animal Rights person.

Philosophy should stay out of attributing different “life forms” with their labels of value or meaning.

Otherwise philosophy becomes as bad as how religions function – as doctrines based on belief. Homoncentrists believe that nonhuman animal life matters less than human life,  and they believe that the world relevant to nonhuman animals and the systems meaningful to nonhuman animals life must not be regarded as a complete world in its own rights in their own terms.

What about the cult of flesh

Posted on by PalangL

What about the cult of flesh

It seems to be enough today to eat veggies for a day or adopt the vegan or vegetarian lifestyle for a period of time and then go round pose as a post-vegan informer of a real truth about “meat”-eating or hunting or any other speciesist and non-vegan-compatible action.

When we think about the ideally vegan world, with a vegan society, and I really mean a society with society here, then we don’t think about the ideology of speciesism and how that is installed in our societies, most likely anywhere today on the globe.

Veganism is a moral education to some extent, but morals don’t create legally binding rules.

If human rights were dependent on the moral understanding of people alone, we’d still have torture and killing all around pretty much I think. We as ethical vegans should not overlook the dangers of speciesism. When we ask people to go vegan, we should bear in mind that the “habit” of “meat”-eating didn’t start just because the humans of the past just happened to be speciesist. The human past evolved from being speciesist to still being speciesist exactly on the grounds of held views, beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, philosophies.

Changing the lifestyle only does not go deep enough. One or more thousand years of deeply embedded ways of thinking within a society have to be changed, both on the individual and on the societal level. And the tragic thing with speciesism is, that humans built their understanding of what humanity means mainly on the basis of considering nonhuman animal life as a “lower” life form in a comparative measure to their own life form of being > HOMO SAPIENS.

What we as ethically driven vegans are asking for is a revolution. This encompasses a change in behaviour most of all firstly, but inasmuch it needs a change in thinking – well of course! And that’s where the question about what that cult of flesh is sets in.

I recently had this short exchange on diaspora that I want to close this blog entry with. It’s about just some examples of vegans-turned-animalkiller.

Why Suckerberg is a speciesist? Cos there are too many of them

Posted on by PalangL

Why AR people in particular should not use Facebook and start using Diaspora

A person doesn’t even have to have a “typical” blemish on his track record in regards to human rights or environmental issues to be proven on the wrong side of morality.

Being a pronounced speciesist is a problem that should make us AR people take a decision on such a morally vain person, especially if the person even acts up upon his or her speciesist attitudes and actually engages in harming and/or killing nonhuman animals.

Facebook makes politics with the individual image of it’s founder Suckerberg. And exactly that’s why you should take his “personal activities” serious enough to leave the services of his company FB alone, if you were ever on there or freeze your usage of it down to a minimum.

Suckerberg stands for the individual that explicitly socially lives out our commonday societal collective egotism. And he is hiped exactly for this. Socially shared egotism is the “social” phenomenon that FB triggered most predominantly. (Someone rightly noted that FB tuned the term “to LIKE something” into a useless word, an interesting observation about the warped psychology of Facebook and its users.)

UPC’s Karen Davis has written about Suckerbergs speciesism and she sheds a light on the gruesomeness of his stance towards nonhuman animals life:

http://www.upc-online.org/thinking/110613only_connect.html

Both, our views on the world based on an abstract scientifically led philosophy of life-as-a-whole and otherwise also our religiously influenced views, they both fail to allow a non-homoncentric approach towards our co-species. If a person is set within either a biologically driven view or stands in a religious tradition of one of the abrahamic religions at least, we can probably not expect him or her to understand more of the world than that it should be subjugated to what we suppose to be the human concern. This is a gigantic problem.

(Also, a person being rich and enormously skilful in these our societies, does not prove for this person not to be a whackjob at the most important moral concerns.)

Well, and for the sake of it, let’s take a look at Suckerbergs human rights track anyway. In which way is FB involved in human rights violations “indirectly” …

This video by http://craig-antweiler.com gives you an overall idea

Diaspora* Next Online Revolution

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4mMSxWEnjU

To close this, see the Diaspora creators and join a pod or set a branch up yourself

the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqxQgfQD24M

Speciesism isn’t …

Posted on by PalangL

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 ‘”.