All week I had been listening for my Muse and...nothing...silence. I tend to write these posts off the cuff when a particular bit of news triggers something, and what I have to say comes pouring forth. I do a tiny bit of editing, mostly for typos, but in the end this is writing on the fly.
This intro comes as a nod towards Mr. Z, my 6th grade teacher, who recently found me on Facebook some 35+ years later. I would credit him as the first teacher who really encouraged my writing, so in a way you have him to blame. The next teacher after him would be Grace Chamberlain with whom he is friends, so I hope to be able to get word to her as well that they are remembered fondly.
Mad Priest posted the triggering item today on his blog. I have borrowed the image above from his post. It is a report on Russians and stray dogs and a subway murder...so go now and read.
This comes on the tail (pun intended) of a piece I read the other day via AlterNet from the Washington Post. It tells the tale of a little dog left abandoned on a tanker and the public outcry to rescue her...so go now and read that...I'll wait.
Finally, a Facebook/college friend posted a status update on Facebook today about "having a bit of a sad" over the death of a friend's dog.
Right or wrong, I was one of those people following Katrina. I found myself more moved by the plight of the animals than the plight of the people. I readily admit that by all human logic there seems to be something very wrong about that. Thankfully the world isn't guided by logic alone. I still carry around in my head the image of the dog trapped on the bit of overpass surrounded by flood waters--terrified, thirsty, alone. I admit to worrying about the dogs in Haiti as well.
At the root of this, I believe, is a cultural understanding of a little bit of Old Testament scripture that traditionally was read as have dominion over and is often now read as stewardship of...God's creation and other creatures. Essentially it is a question of humanity's role within or above nature. Are we part of nature or above nature?
I for one believe we are very much a part of nature...that we are a species among many. We may be blessed (or cursed) with possessing the most powerful intellect of the species, but we remain part of the animal kingdom none the less. Therefore, I also believe in animal intelligence...which brings us ultimately to suffering.
I think the Washington Post piece is onto something. Our brains are simply not programmed to truly process suffering on such a massive scale as the death and destruction in Haiti. I played the comparative math game yesterday. "Let's see...200,000 dead in Haiti would be about ten Marquette, Michigans, dead and gone...about seven Marquette Counties...or about 2/3 of the entire Upper Peninsula. I still tended to stare at those figures blankly.
Yet when I read the report on the eighty-eight nursing home residents, lying in the street with only two care aides desperately trying to comfort them., I was horrified. The report that rats were seen chewing at the diapers...
Yesterday on NPR they interviewed a musician who's school collapsed in the quake ten years to the day that a fire had destroyed it before. He was pulled alive from the rubble after only eighteen hours. His pregnant wife who was with him in the building was killed.
These individual stories moved me, and when I saw the video footage of the young boy pulled from the building I had a physical reaction as well...that sort of over-the-top-of-the-hill belly flip-butterfly feeling.
I believe that our animals experience suffering too. The difference lies in how they cope with their suffering. They may lack the cognitive ability to understand their suffering-to remember a time without suffering-or look to a time beyond their suffering. They stoically accept it as the now and do their best to continue living.
Nothing raises my hackles more than to hear someone exclaim, "Oh, please, it was just a dog..." As a believer in stewardship and the continuum of animal species that includes us rather than excludes us, to make such as statement is to be on a slippery slope to logic that can include the statement, "Oh, please, it's just a Jew...or a fag...or a Haitian."
To simply negate the being and suffering of a creature is to deny the creator in that creature. This is not the same as establishing an equivalency in which the value of a cat's life is the same as the value of a child's life. Such comparisons seem pointless in their attempt to defend the negation of value in animals' lives.
Of course, if I somehow found myself in a burning house and could only rescue either the little child or my beloved dog, I would rescue the child. That though in itself is meaningless. Life does not present itself in such simplistic black and white choices.
Life tends to present us with situations much more akin to Sophie's Choice, where upon arrival at Auschwitz, Meryl Streep's character must choose which of her children is to live and which to die. In the years that follow, Sophie experiences a particularly human form of suffering; a suffering to which animals are immune, survivor's guilt.
Yesterday the UN announced that the search and rescue phase of the operation in Haiti is over. I read of a mother's emotional response to the news; her three children are buried in the rubble. For the first two to three days following the quake, she heard their cries and could do nothing. She refuses to give up. I fear her suffering will never end.
So as you see, I am not heartless. I am not blind to human suffering. However, do not ask me to sacrifice my compassion for animals as a way to prove myself. We cannot truly process and understand suffering on the scale of the Haiti disaster. Writing off the suffering of animals in light of human suffering does not bring us any closer to doing so - it is perhaps one way of coping with our own survivor's guilt. However, I see holding onto a sense of compassion for animals as a better way of battling that guilt.
I choose to battle the horror of unexplainable death with a fierce determination to protect life - ALL life - "all creatures, great and small." Peace.
This intro comes as a nod towards Mr. Z, my 6th grade teacher, who recently found me on Facebook some 35+ years later. I would credit him as the first teacher who really encouraged my writing, so in a way you have him to blame. The next teacher after him would be Grace Chamberlain with whom he is friends, so I hope to be able to get word to her as well that they are remembered fondly.
Mad Priest posted the triggering item today on his blog. I have borrowed the image above from his post. It is a report on Russians and stray dogs and a subway murder...so go now and read.
This comes on the tail (pun intended) of a piece I read the other day via AlterNet from the Washington Post. It tells the tale of a little dog left abandoned on a tanker and the public outcry to rescue her...so go now and read that...I'll wait.
Finally, a Facebook/college friend posted a status update on Facebook today about "having a bit of a sad" over the death of a friend's dog.
Right or wrong, I was one of those people following Katrina. I found myself more moved by the plight of the animals than the plight of the people. I readily admit that by all human logic there seems to be something very wrong about that. Thankfully the world isn't guided by logic alone. I still carry around in my head the image of the dog trapped on the bit of overpass surrounded by flood waters--terrified, thirsty, alone. I admit to worrying about the dogs in Haiti as well.
At the root of this, I believe, is a cultural understanding of a little bit of Old Testament scripture that traditionally was read as have dominion over and is often now read as stewardship of...God's creation and other creatures. Essentially it is a question of humanity's role within or above nature. Are we part of nature or above nature?
I for one believe we are very much a part of nature...that we are a species among many. We may be blessed (or cursed) with possessing the most powerful intellect of the species, but we remain part of the animal kingdom none the less. Therefore, I also believe in animal intelligence...which brings us ultimately to suffering.
I think the Washington Post piece is onto something. Our brains are simply not programmed to truly process suffering on such a massive scale as the death and destruction in Haiti. I played the comparative math game yesterday. "Let's see...200,000 dead in Haiti would be about ten Marquette, Michigans, dead and gone...about seven Marquette Counties...or about 2/3 of the entire Upper Peninsula. I still tended to stare at those figures blankly.
Yet when I read the report on the eighty-eight nursing home residents, lying in the street with only two care aides desperately trying to comfort them., I was horrified. The report that rats were seen chewing at the diapers...
Yesterday on NPR they interviewed a musician who's school collapsed in the quake ten years to the day that a fire had destroyed it before. He was pulled alive from the rubble after only eighteen hours. His pregnant wife who was with him in the building was killed.
These individual stories moved me, and when I saw the video footage of the young boy pulled from the building I had a physical reaction as well...that sort of over-the-top-of-the-hill belly flip-butterfly feeling.
I believe that our animals experience suffering too. The difference lies in how they cope with their suffering. They may lack the cognitive ability to understand their suffering-to remember a time without suffering-or look to a time beyond their suffering. They stoically accept it as the now and do their best to continue living.Nothing raises my hackles more than to hear someone exclaim, "Oh, please, it was just a dog..." As a believer in stewardship and the continuum of animal species that includes us rather than excludes us, to make such as statement is to be on a slippery slope to logic that can include the statement, "Oh, please, it's just a Jew...or a fag...or a Haitian."
To simply negate the being and suffering of a creature is to deny the creator in that creature. This is not the same as establishing an equivalency in which the value of a cat's life is the same as the value of a child's life. Such comparisons seem pointless in their attempt to defend the negation of value in animals' lives.
Of course, if I somehow found myself in a burning house and could only rescue either the little child or my beloved dog, I would rescue the child. That though in itself is meaningless. Life does not present itself in such simplistic black and white choices.
Life tends to present us with situations much more akin to Sophie's Choice, where upon arrival at Auschwitz, Meryl Streep's character must choose which of her children is to live and which to die. In the years that follow, Sophie experiences a particularly human form of suffering; a suffering to which animals are immune, survivor's guilt.
Yesterday the UN announced that the search and rescue phase of the operation in Haiti is over. I read of a mother's emotional response to the news; her three children are buried in the rubble. For the first two to three days following the quake, she heard their cries and could do nothing. She refuses to give up. I fear her suffering will never end.
So as you see, I am not heartless. I am not blind to human suffering. However, do not ask me to sacrifice my compassion for animals as a way to prove myself. We cannot truly process and understand suffering on the scale of the Haiti disaster. Writing off the suffering of animals in light of human suffering does not bring us any closer to doing so - it is perhaps one way of coping with our own survivor's guilt. However, I see holding onto a sense of compassion for animals as a better way of battling that guilt.
I choose to battle the horror of unexplainable death with a fierce determination to protect life - ALL life - "all creatures, great and small." Peace.
2 comments:
Amen dear, Brother!
Larry--you said it all!
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