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This
version, like other online versions of this series of animal stories, has been
expanded (in this case, by about 3,000 words) from the version delivered as a
sermon. Many addition stories have been
added back to this version, which has about 6,300 words. PRAYER: “The Mountain Woman,” by DuBose Heyward The sermon today is on empathy, on that essential quality
of being able to feel another’s pain, and the hope that if we can feel for them
we will care for them, and their fragile hopes and dreams will be safe with
us. Against that background, I’ve chosen
to share a poem with you as our prayer.
It is not about empathy, unless a tale of murder can be said to be about
life. I think you’ll find that it needs
the silence following it. DuBose Heyward
wrote it in 1924. He was the Southern
white man who in the same year wrote the novel “Porgy,” from which George
Gershwin’s folk opera “Porgy and Bess” was derived eleven years later. This poem has the same poignancy, and is
named “The Mountain Woman”: Among the sullen peaks she stood at bay Hers was the hand that sunk the furrows deep And when the sheriff shot her eldest son But yesterday her man returned too soon
SERMON The ability to sense another’s feelings,
needs, fears, and act on them is the greatest blessing we can offer to
life. And when we hear of someone who
seems to lack that ability to sense another’s hurt, or to care – as in that
poem about the Mountain Woman – it is almost an affront to humanity. How could “her man” not tell that flower,
that little piece of living, fragile beauty was her umbilical cord to beauty
and what was left of hope? Sometimes I think that if you can just
respond to natural beauty, there is greatness about you. I read of a young man who was working
in Africa with chimpanzees, as part of Jane Goodall’s efforts there. One afternoon he took a break and climbed to
the top of a ridge to watch a spectacular sunset over Lake Tanganyika. As the student watched, he noticed first one
and then a second chimpanzee climbing up toward him. The two adult males were not together and saw
each other only when they reached the top of the ridge. They did not see the student. The apes greeted each other with pants,
clasping hands, and sat down together.
In silence and awe, the human and the chimpanzees watched the sun set
and twilight fall. (Jeffrey M. Masson, When Elephants Weep, p. 192) Some who have observed bears in the
wild speak of them sitting on their haunches at sunset, gazing at it, seemingly
lost in meditation. (Jeffrey M. Masson, When
Elephants Weep, p. 193) We live in troubled and quite brutal
times, but I want to see us as part of an ancient and noble heritage of life
that cares about and responds to the feelings, fears and needs of other life. I want to remind us of our deep animal heritage,
and to empower us by giving us some animal stories to take with us. Most of those who work with and write
about other animals have a particular concern over the way we treat animals in
biomedical research and on the factory farms that produce most of the meat for
our species. For over three hundred
years at least, we have conducted many scientific experiments on animals, or on
other humans, that are far worse than the mountain man’s drunken insensitivity. Some scientists still scoff at the suggestion
that animals even have feelings. This
seems to have come from the philosopher Descartes (1596-1650) who said, more
than three centuries ago, that animals had no feelings, no intentions, but were
like machines. This may sound like
harmless silliness, but it’s not harmless.
A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin wrote about one of these experiments,
in a passage that has been quoted hundreds of times: “… Every one has heard of the dog
suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man,
unless the operation was fully justified by an increase of our knowledge, or
unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his
life.”
(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 48) The neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp from
Bowling Green State University writes, “There is overwhelming evidence that
other mammals have many of the same basic emotional circuits that we do… At the
basic emotional level, all mammals are remarkably similar.” (Jeffrey M. Masson,
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon, p. 106)
Our sensitivity to others runs so deep
even modern brain scans show it to be an absolutely archaic part of us, which
means we would have to share this sensitivity with tens of thousands of other
species. Neuroimaging shows that making moral
judgments involves a wide variety of brain areas, some extremely ancient
(Greene and Haidt 2002, from Frans de Waal’s Primates and Philosophers,
pp. 56-57). Asked to watch photographs of facial
expressions, we involuntarily copy the expressions seen. We do so even if the photo is shown
subliminally, that is, if it appears for only a few milliseconds. Unaware of the expression, our facial muscles
nevertheless echo it. (Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape, p. 177) Yet the kind of experiments Darwin
mentioned still go on, whether to test cosmetics, drugs, or scientific and
medical curiosities. In one set of tests on monkeys, the
animals had been subjected to lethal doses of radiation and then forced by
electric shock to run on a treadmill until they collapsed. Before dying, the unanesthetized monkeys
suffered the predictable effects of excessive radiation, including vomiting and
diarrhea. After acknowledging all this,
a DNA [Defense Nuclear Agency] spokesman commented: “To the best of our knowledge, the animals experience no pain.”
(Marc Bekoff, Minding Animals, p. 140)
The willful blindness in that statement is just incredible. It’s something the Mountain Man might have
said, but he was drunk. And we are often just as insensitive
to the feelings of our fellow human animals, aren’t we? Think of Abu Graib, Guantanemo, or the
650,000 Iraqi citizens we have killed since illegally invading and occupying
their country, or the million of them whose deaths we caused in the 1990s
through Bill Clinton’s sanctions. I remember
Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright being asked to respond to
Amnesty International’s estimate that the sanctions had caused the deaths of
over 500,000 Iraqi children, when she said, “We think it’s worth it.” Or think of living in the country where over
40% of our citizens have no health coverage – the largest percentage in the
civilized world. We routinely dehumanize
people in wars to kill them, and Clinton, Albright and the Bush administration
have dehumanized over a million and a half Iraqis to remain oblivious to the
fact that we caused their deaths. But we have also dehumanized tens of millions
of our own citizens, haven’t we? What is so puzzling and frustrating is
that empathy in the 200 species of primates is such a rich area that one
researcher analyzed, in an unpublished work, over one thousand examples of empathic
behavior in monkeys and apes. So empathy
is an ancient and deep part of us, and if it seems rare today, it may be
because something else is getting in the way — things I’ll talk about in the
next two sermons in this series. But for now, let me share just a few
stories about empathy in other animals, so you can get a feel for how ordinary
it is, and how easy it is for you to make a very good guess about what these animals
felt, needed, and intended to do through their behaviors. During one winter at the Arnhem Zoo in
the Netherlands, after cleaning the hall and before releasing the chimps, the
keepers hosed out all rubber tires in the enclosure and hung them one by one on
a horizontal log extending from the climbing frame. Most of the tires had tears or holes in them,
and the water leaked out. But one tire
was in good shape, and remained full of fresh water. A female chimpanzee named Krom wanted to get
this tire down. Unfortunately, the tire
was at the end of the row, with six or more heavy tires hanging in front of
it. Krom was slightly crippled, and also
deaf. She had never mated, but had
helped raise many of the young chimps, acting as a kind of aunt. She pulled and pulled at the tire she wanted
but couldn’t remove it from the log. She
pushed the tire backward, but there it hit the climbing frame and couldn’t be removed
either. Krom worked in vain on this
problem for over ten minutes, ignored by everyone, except Jakie, a
seven-year-old Krom had taken care of as a juvenile. Immediately after Krom gave up and
walked away, Jakie approached the scene.
Without hesitation he pushed the tires one by one off the log, beginning
with the front one, followed by the second in the row, and so on, as any
sensible chimp would do. When he reached
the last tire, he carefully removed it so that no water was lost, carrying it
straight to his aunt, placing it upright in front of her. Krom began scooping up the water with her
hands. (Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers, pp. 31-32) Jeffrey M. Masson, who has written two
wonderful books of animal stories, writes that in some extraordinary wildlife
footage he got to watch, a small impala antelope in Africa raced away from a
pack of wild dogs into a river where she was immediately seized by a large
crocodile. In the world of antelopes,
this is known as a very bad day.
Suddenly a hippopotamus rushed to the rescue of the dazed antelope. The crocodile released his prey and the hippo
then nudged the small animal up the bank of the river and followed her for a
few feet until she dropped from exhaustion.
Instead of leaving, the hippo then helped the little creature to her
feet and, opening his mouth as wide as possible, breathed warm air onto the
stunned antelope. The hippo did this
five times before returning to the forest.
“There seems to be no possible explanation for this remarkable behavior
except compassion.” If this would seem
easier to believe if the animal had been a dolphin rather than a hippo, many
evolutionary theorists believe that hippos are the closest living relatives to
whales, which evolved some 25 to 38 million years ago, and to dolphins, which
evolved only 11 million years ago. (Jeffrey
M. Masson, Dogs Never Lie, p. 94, and online references about the relationship
to whales and dolphins.) Almost every day, newspapers and TV
shows around the country report stories of dogs who have saved people’s
lives. The St. Louis Post Dispatch
reported on its front page some years ago (in March 1996) the extraordinary
story of two stray dogs, a dachshund and an Australian cattle dog, who kept
alive a mentally disabled boy when he became lost in the woods for three
“bone-chilling” days. The boy’s mother
called the dogs “angels from heaven” after ten-year-old Josh Carlisle, who has
Down syndrome, was rescued from a dry creek in Montana by a searcher on
horseback. In temperatures close to
zero, the dogs had played with him and cuddled him to keep him warm at
night. Josh hadn’t eaten while he was
lost, but the dogs must have led him to water, for he was not fully dehydrated. The boy had mild frostbite on all ten toes,
having spent his first night with a light snow dusting the ground. When Josh was carried to the ambulance, the
dachshund followed and kept jumping up to see in the window. “I’ll never forget
that dog’s face,” said one of the rescuers.
Both dogs found a new home with the child’s family, and his mother told
reporters, “They fell in love with my son during those three days.” (Frans de
Waal, Dogs Never Lie, pp. 97-98) This is two-way empathy. The mother also felt that she knew how the
dogs must have felt in order to help the boy, and to follow him to the ambulance
because they’d formed an emotional connection with him. And the boy’s family formed the same connection,
and adopted both dogs. When all the species
involved care for the life they see in another, everybody wins. Studying apes brings the familiarity
much closer, as they “think” (or “assess”) much like we do. How much?
Allen and Beatrice Gardner, who first
obtained the baby Washoe from our Air Force, began teaching her sign
language. They, however, were not fluent
in it themselves, so their vocabulary was more limited than that of some of
Washoe’s later contacts. They taught
Washoe to sign “napkin” for “bib” because they didn’t know the sign for bib.
Washoe kept wanting to draw the outline of a bib on her chest with her two
index fingers, and they kept correcting her.
Several months later when a group of human signers at the California School
for the Deaf were watching a film of Washoe, they informed the Gardners that
the baby chimpanzee was not signing BIB correctly. It should be signed, they told the Gardners,
by drawing a bib on the chest with the two index fingers. Washoe had been right all along — and had
reasoned just as the humans did who first invented the sign for BIB. (Roger
Fouts, Next of Kin, p. 83) One beautiful moment early on during
Project Washoe illustrated the common need of chimps and children to use their
signs. The Gardners were in their
kitchen entertaining some friends whose toddler happened to be deaf. Washoe was playing outside. Suddenly, the child and Washoe saw one another
through the kitchen window. As if on
cue, the child signed MONKEY at the same moment Washoe signed BABY. (Roger
Fouts, Next of Kin, p. 88) How
different do the recognition and thought processes of these individuals from
two different species sound? And Washoe would often sign QUIET to
herself as she sneaked into a forbidden room. (Roger Fouts, Next of Kin,
p. 72) There are lots of stories about empathy
in chimpanzees and bonobos. Bonobos are
apes that look a lot like chimpanzees.
Bonobos and chimpanzees are our closest relatives. One story is about the two-year-old daughter
of a bonobo named Linda, who whimpered at her mother with pouted lips, which
meant that she wanted to nurse. But this
infant had been in the San Diego Zoo’s nursery and was returned to the group
long after Linda’s milk had dried up.
The mother understood, though, and went to the fountain to suck her
mouth full of water. She then sat in
front of her daughter and puckered her lips so that the infant could drink from
them. Linda repeated her trip to the
fountain three times until her daughter was satisfied. (Frans de Waal, Our
Inner Ape, p. 4) So far, she looks
more evolved than the mountain man. Frans de Waal tells another story of
how a troop of monkeys treated one of their infants, who was born blind. The infant was born into a free-ranging population
of rhesus monkeys released onto a Caribbean island. Apart from being sightless, the infant
appeared perfectly normal: he played, for instance, as much as other infants
his age. Compared to his peers, he often
broke contact with his mother, thereby placing himself in situations that he
could not recognize as dangerous. His
mother responded by retrieving and restricting him more than other mothers did
with their infants. In other studies of
blind infant monkeys such infants were never left alone, and specific group members
stayed with them whenever the group moved.
(Frans de Waal, Good-Natured, pp. 51-52) Another story shows the strength of
the ape’s empathic response. One woman [Ladygina-Kohts] wrote about her young
chimpanzee, Joni, saying that the best way to get him off the roof of her house
(much better than any reward or threat of punishment) was by arousing his sympathy: If
I pretend to be crying, close my eyes and weep, Joni immediately stops his
plays or any other activities, quickly runs over to me, all excited and
shagged, from the most remote places in the house, such as the roof or the ceiling
of his cage, from where I could not drive him down despite my persistent calls
and entreaties. He hastily runs around
me, as if looking for the offender; looking at my face, he tenderly takes my
chin in his palm, lightly touches my face with his finger, as though trying to
understand what is happening, and turns around, clenching his toes into firm
fists. (Ladyginia-Kohts, 2002 [1935]: 121) (Frans de Waal, Primates and
Philosophers) Frans de Waal recorded an incident
that occurred at the Wisconsin Primate Center.
The adult males in a group of stumptailed monkeys became extremely protective
of Wolf, an old, virtually blind female.
Whenever the caretakers tried to move the monkeys from the indoor to the
outdoor section of the enclosure, the adult males would stand guard at the door
between the sections, sometimes holding it open, until Wolf had gone through.
(from Good-Natured, p. 52) Captive Diana monkeys have been
observed engaging in behavior that strongly suggests empathy. Individuals were trained to insert a token
into a slot to obtain food. The oldest
female in the group failed to learn how to do this. Her mate watched her failed attempts, and on
three occasions he approached her, picked up the tokens she had dropped,
inserted them into the machine, and then allowed her to have the food. The male apparently evaluated the situation,
helped his mate only after she failed, and seemed to understand that she wanted
food, but could not get it on her own.
He could have eaten the food, but he let his mate have it. There was no evidence that the male’s
behavior benefited him in any way other than to help his mate. (Marc Bekoff, Minding
Animals, p. 102) Frans de Waal tells two stories of
intuitive empathic communication. “In
the course of her studies, Amy Parish developed close relations with zoo bonobos,
and the females treated her almost as one of their own. On one occasion when the San Diego bonobos
were given hearts of celery, which were claimed by the females, Parish gestured
to have the apes look her way for a photograph.
Louise, who had most of the food, probably thought that she was begging
and ignored her for about ten minutes.
Then she suddenly stood up, divided her celery, and threw half of it
across the moat to this woman who so desperately wanted her attention.” (Frans
de Waal, Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape, p. 157) The female bonobos had bonded with
Amy, but not with De Waal: apes make precise gender distinctions among
people. Amy later visited these same
bonobo friends after a maternity leave.
She wanted to show the apes her infant son. The oldest female briefly glanced at the
human baby, and then disappeared into an adjacent cage. Amy thought the female was upset, but she had
only left to pick up her own newborn.
She quickly returned to hold the ape baby up against the glass so that
the two infants could look into each other’s eyes. (Frans de Waal, Our Inner
Ape, p. 156) Here were two females, both friends
and proud mothers, showing off their babies.
Emotionally, how different do we seem to be from these apes with whom we
share over 98% of our DNA? Roger Fouts is the man I mentioned
last week, who has spent forty years teaching the chimpanzee Washoe to
communicate through American Sign Language, and establishing a deep and
respectful friendship with her. Once
Roger had broken his arm and came with it in a sling, but not in a cast, to contain
it until the bones knitted. The chimpanzees must have seen the
pain he was trying to hide, because instead of giving their usual, raucous,
pant-hoot morning greeting, they all sat very still and intently watched
him. Washoe signed HURT THERE, COME, and
Roger approached and knelt down by the group.
Washoe gently put her fingers through the wire separating them, and
Roger moved closer. She touched him,
then kissed his arm. Another chimp also
signed HURT and touched him. What is perhaps most amazing about
their reaction was that Washoe’s ten-year-old son Loulis didn’t ask Roger for
his usual CHASE game. In fact, he didn’t
ask Roger to play his favorite game until several weeks later, when Roger’s arm
was on the mend. That’s empathy. I’m betting they would also have understood
the Mountain Woman’s love for that little crimson flower. (Deborah and Roger Fouts, “Our Emotional
Kin,” in Mark Bekoff, The Smile of a Dolphin, p. 207) Fouts says that he and his wife Debbi
“had never hugged one another or been demonstrative in Washoe’s presence. This precaution went all the way back to the
late 1960s when Washoe would sometimes misinterpret physical affection and
attack the “offender.” Washoe had rarely
been to our house since then. As far as
we knew, Washoe thought Debbi and I were friends or coworkers. Out of habit, we kept up this act in
Ellensburg (Washington) for the first year, but on one of six-year-old Hillary’s
first visits to our lab, Washoe asked to hug her good-bye before she left. After they hugged I asked Washoe, WHO THAT?,
pointing to Hillary. Without hesitating,
Washoe signed ROGER DEBBI BABY. Nobody
reads nonverbal behavior like a chimpanzee.
And all those years we thought we had Washoe fooled!” (Roger Fouts, Next
of Kin, p. 270) Other animals also have a sense of
“justice,” or at least revenge for behavior that crosses the line – a line we
understand immediately when we hear these stories. A few weeks ago, I told you the story of the
vengeful camel: Edward Westermarck (1862–1939), retold
the story of a vengeful camel that had been excessively beaten on multiple
occasions by a fourteen-year-old boy for loitering or turning the wrong
way. The camel passively took the
punishment, but a few days later, finding itself unladen and alone on the road
with the same conductor, “seized the unlucky boy’s head in its monstrous mouth,
and lifting him up in the air flung him down again on the earth with the upper
part of the skull completely torn off, and his brains scattered on the ground.”
(Frans de Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master, p. 338) Here’s another story about an animal
sensing behavioral boundaries, and teaching humans a lesson – a less violent
lesson – about justice: Ola, a young
false killer whale in an oceanarium, was accustomed to a staff of human divers
working in his tank. One diver took to
teasing Ola surreptitiously. Oceanarium
management had their first inkling of this one day when Ola placed his snout on
the man’s back, pushed him to the floor of the tank, and held him there. (He was wearing diving gear, so he did not
drown.) Seeking to free the diver, trainers
gave Ola commands, tried to startle him with loud noises, and offered fish, to
no avail. After five minutes Ola released
the diver. Subsequent investigation
brought out the teasing. (Jeffrey M. Masson, When Elephants Weep, p.
174) Feelings of all kinds cross over species
lines – sometimes with results that can sound funny to members of one species
(though probably not members of the other species). Roger Fouts tells of the time when
Washoe developed a head-over-heels crush on Josh (Roger’s son). “It seems that my son’s looks and sexuality
had matured just enough that Washoe’s own teenage hormones now began raging at
the mere sight of him. Whenever Josh
entered the lab, Washoe literally threw herself at his feet and began shrieking
like a desperate, lovelorn suitor. It
was bad enough, Josh said, that he couldn’t get the girls at school to pay attention
to him. To have a female chimpanzee throwing
herself at him every day really added insult to injury. After a few months of Washoe’s entreaties,
Josh decided to avoid the lab for a while.” (Roger Fouts, Next of Kin,
p. 272) Being able to read us also lets chimps
and other apes trick us, which they love to do.
When I visited the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory
University in Atlanta last November, I saw – from a safe distance – a female
chimpanzee named Georgia, about whom I had read enough to want to stay away
from her. She absolutely loved playing
the same trick on visitors every chance she got. When she saw a new face, she would go fill
her mouth with water, then saunter back over to the fence and act cute, luring
visitors in so she could spit the water all over them, then jump up and down
hooting her self-satisfied chimp laugh.
And of course we can trick them too, though they don’t like it. There is also a great story about a
young man who worked with chimpanzees in the wild, in the Gombe area in
Tanzania as part of Jane Goodall’s group.
They weren’t allowed to interact with chimps. But an adolescent female chimp developed a
small crush on this young man, and kept coming up to groom him. So he suddenly acted as if he saw something
in the distance. He moved his head a little
from one side to the other, like owls do.
The adoring chimp stopped grooming and looked in the direction he was
looking, then made a few steps in the direction of his glance and looked back
at him. He kept up his act, and she
walked off in that direction and disappeared.
A little later she returned, came
straight up to him, and slapped his head, thereafter ignoring him for the rest
of the day. He said the slap was
probably a punishment after she realized that he had tricked her. I’d say, ask some teen-aged girls how they
would feel if they got tricked like that by a boy they had a crush on, and
whether they might feel like slapping him in the head then ignoring him. (by Frans X. Plooij, “A Slap in the Face” in
Mark Bekoff, The Smile of a Dolphin, p. 88) In 1993, a book titled The Great
Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity was published. This important book launched what has become
known as the Great Ape Project (GAP).
The major goals of the GAP were to admit great apes to the Community
of Equals in which the following basic moral rights, enforceable by law,
are granted: (1) the right to life, (2) the protection of individual liberty,
and (3) the prohibition of torture. In
the Great Ape Project, “equals” does not mean any specific actual likeness but
equal moral consideration. (Marc Bekoff, Minding Animals, p. 142-143) For fourteen years, The Great Ape
Project has fought to guard the life and liberty of gorillas, orangutans,
chimpanzees and bonobos, and to protect them from being tortured by members of
our species. Think of that story from
the first installment in this sermon series, about the gorilla who saved a
three-year-old boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure at Chicago’s Brookfield
Zoo in 1996, or today’s story of the hippo saving the antelope, the dogs saving
the boy in Montana and some of the others.
We respond to these stories because we also have these feelings and this
capacity for empathy. One of the great ironies in studying
the natural world and the civilized world is that civilization and the artificial
rules of our cultures are so often used to anesthetize the natural caring that
animals feel for one another, and to make us more brutal. One of our greatest dreams must be to
find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is
possible for us to live without regret.
(adapted from Barry Lopez, from Marc Bekoff, Minding Animals, p.
179) There
are more animal stories in this series, but you’re beginning to see, I’m sure,
that these aren’t just animal stories.
They are snapshots taken from our own family album: the family of all
life on earth with the capacity to care for one another. Marc
Bekoff, like many of the people who spend their time with other animals, is a
strong opponent of the brutal practices of our factory farms. While there are hundreds of disturbing
stories, these three will give some of the sense: About five million dairy cows are kept
in confinement in the US. Female dairy
cows are forced to have a calf every year.
Their calves are removed from them immediately after birth so they do
not drink their mother’s milk. This is
extremely demanding on their bodies and on their psychological states. These dairy cows are literally milk machines,
and they are not allowed to be mothers, to care for their young. (Marc Bekoff, Minding
Animals, p. 151) Up to about 25 percent of hens sustain
broken bones when they are removed from their cages to be transported to a
processing plant. Each hen now lays
upwards of 300 eggs per year, as compared to 170 in 1925. (Marc Bekoff, Minding
Animals, p. 152) And Bekoff is clear that education
makes a difference, and that we can make a difference, when he notes
that the production and demand for formula-fed veal has dropped sharply since
1985 and has now stabilized at approximately eight hundred thousand calves per
year, a decrease of over 400 percent. Public
outrage over how veal calves are treated was the major reason for this decline.
(Marc Bekoff, Minding Animals, p. 153) One
last poignant story, a parable of a voice crying in the wilderness: Some
of these animal stories feel like the tale of the lonely whale, but with a
twist. The whale, perhaps, really is
one of its kind, doomed to a solitary life that may bring forth plaintive cries
every day until it dies. We resonate
with the story because we too need to have connections with the life around us,
and often feel the need for more, and more significant, connections. But we are not alone. We share emotional responses with tens of
thousands of species of other animals, if only we would be open to it. Our sin is one of ignorance: we are ignorant
of the fact that we are not alone on the earth, that our cries need not be into
empty space or onto projected deities created in large part to fill that need
for connection (the root meaning of “religion” is “reconnection”). Perhaps
we are broadcasting on the wrong frequency.
For centuries, we have judged ourselves – amazingly! – as the world’s
only “reasoning” creatures, and to this day, continue to treat animals in
experiments and on our factory farms as unthinking, unfeeling brutes. In 1789, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham
spoke to a world already badly misled by Descartes’ silly notion that we alone
have a “ghost” in our “machine” placed there by God, enabling us – but no other
animals – to reason and to feel. Bentham
was concerned, as are many today, about the subject of our treatment of other
animals in scientific experiments, and he said, “The question is not, Can they reason?
Nor Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?” Can they suffer? Monkeys dying of radiation poisoning,
vivisected dogs, veal calves confined in two-foot wide pens and kept anemic for
the duration of their short miserable lives (because whiter veal sells better),
chimpanzees who have their teeth knocked out so dentistry students can practice
on them — these, and thousands more like them: can they suffer? Could our customary indifference to the
suffering of these other animals be related to our national indifference to
Iraqi citizens, to the poor and desperate of other countries and the poor and
desperate of our own country? Could this
learned callousness be crippling our own souls, and making us feel more alone
and isolated from the rest of Life’s family than we need to be? If so, how do we differ from the Mountain Man
that DuBose Heyward brought to imaginative life over eighty years ago? Is that comfortable? If not, might we expect more of this species
that has named itself “the Wise”? What
do you think? What do you feel? What do we do? |