SOME CONFLICTING TRENDS IN ANIMAL CULTURE

Animal psychology

These improvements have partly come about because of changes in the perception of the worth, the value of animal companions. And this is partly because of advances in animal psychology. Jeffrey Masson, in Dogs Never Lie about Love, writes movingly in a survey of the emotional lives of dogs. Masson, a psychoanalyst, studied the surprising depth of canine emotional complexity. He pondered sources such as myth and literature, scientific studies, and testimony from dog trainers and dog lovers around the world. Emotions such as gratitude, compassion, loneliness and disappointment appear in this account. Dogs dream — perhaps in Technicolor. Those of us who have watched a sleeping dog wagging her tail — dreaming of her human companions, perhaps, or of doggy Christmas — know the depth of intelligence and sentient life of our canine friends.

Jeffrey Masson, considering the old prejudices on dog behavior, invites a re-evaluation of canine emotional intelligence: he declares that the "master emotion" of digs is: Love. Sounds divine! Indeed, Masson quoted [Dogs Never Lie about Love, p. vii] Fritz von Unruh as saying, "The dog is the only being that loves you more than you love yourself."

Bash Dibra, writing in DogSpeak, opines that dogs are pure and honest creatures who are pure in their affections and open about their likes and dislikes. Treated with kindness and respect, they are friends for life. They offer the unconditional love that many humans cannot even comprehend.

Perhaps there is a clue here to the true human vocation. Could it be that animals are the wise and gentle ones, and humans the cruel and violent? Seems that way! So, perhaps we can see animals as our teachers and allow them to suggest a re-definition of the human calling. If it is love, then our animal friends will loom even larger in our social life in the coming century.

Readers interested in this line of work can also see Masson's Why Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals, co-authored with Susan McCarthy.

Such work as Masson's is paralleled by an outpouring of animal-art books. [Art about, not by, animals!] arty dogs by David Baird, illustrated by Maurice Broughton, is a colorful tale of woman's best friend in varied circumstances.

Quality of life improvements for animal companions

When we study seriously the future of a social phenomenon, one of our methods is the extrapolation of existing trends. The trend of Quality of life improvements for animal companions is a hopeful one, for animals and for people. More and more it is the case that pet-owners, humans with animal companions, are being wonderful pastors to their animal friends. They are treating them both only like one of the family, but as more important than humans. They receive perfect love from them, and are learning to value and cherish and pamper the animals accordingly. The emergence of pet cemeteries is one feature of the undying love which humans have for their animal companions. [See also The Last Will and Testament of an Extremely Distinguished Dog by Eugene O'Neill.]

More and more, animals – primarily dogs and cats — are experiencing a superb quality of life from birth to death and beyond. Health, nutritional, grooming and adjustment problems are studied and solved lovingly by legions of pet-lovers. No longer are veterinarians the only non-owner caregivers for pets. Massage therapists, animal behaviorists, trainers, groomers, animal psychologists, and nutritionists offer goods and services aimed at helping pet-owners secure a great life for their animals buddies.

So we see here a major trend within the trend of Quality of life improvements for animal companions. This is the trend of measuring and identifying the definition of the good life for animals. Since the identification of the Good Life [for example love guided by wisdom] is a major task of philosophy as that enterprises has often been conceived, we can say here that there is a major social trend towards advancement in the experimental philosophy of animal happiness. [Experimental here means: learning systematically from specific experiments testing our theories of what animal happiness/Good Life is].

Genetic engineering

The future promises more genetically engineered animals.

Until now, scientists relied on finding mutant strains of mice which suffered from diseases or symptoms similar to those experienced by human beings. Mice commonly used to test cancer treatments, for example, are specially bred to be highly prone to developing cancer.

Advances in biotechnology take that one step further and allow scientists to alter the genetics of mouse embryos so they are born with specific defects such as cystic fibrosis or arthritis. As National Institutes of Health immunologist Ronald Schwartz recently told the Washington Post, such animal models should be incredibly powerful. John Sharp, superintendent of induced mutant resource at the Jackson Laboratory put it bluntly. "More and more research is moving toward the use of these mice. It’s where the future of research is headed."

And it’s not just mice. Researchers at laboratories around the world are genetically altering pigs, goats and sheep to do everything from produce more easily transplantable organs to providing delivery mechanisms for medicine in their milk.

As animal rights activists point out, animal models are not completely analogous to human beings. Substances which cause cancer in rats sometime fail to cause cancer in human beings and vice versa. But what if researchers genetically engineered mice and rats to suffer from the same illnesses human beings suffer from? They now can. This is creating an enormous debate about the ethics of such animal research.

As genetic engineering of animals spread so do opposition movements aimed at limiting or banning it. Those opposed to such genetic engineering complain it is wrong to design animals to suffer.

Brian Carnell reports in "Animal Rights" news:

"There really is something primordially horrible about replicating animals that will suffer endlessly," Bernard Rollin, a Colorado State University physiologist, told the Washington Post. Other attack genetic engineering as challenging our notions of life as inherently sacred.

"The biggest opposition in recent years came in Switzerland where 112,000

Swiss citizens signed a petition to put a ban on research on genetically altered animals on the ballot.

"Failing to use these genetically engineered animals, however, will mean ignoring an excellent source of medical information. Genetically engineered mice have already yielded important information about deadly human illnesses such as Huntington’s Disease. When scientists removed a gene in mice which corresponds to the defective human gene that causes Huntington’s, researchers noticed small protein deposits in the brains of the mice; something that had not been observed in Huntington’s patients. Upon re-examining the brains of Huntington’s victims, however, researchers indeed found the protein deposits, which are now suspected as one of the primary causes of the diseases' symptoms. Source: Animal Rights news, Vol. 1, No. 5 - June 15, 1998. See http://www.animalrights.net/ar_news/1998/arnews_06_15_1998.html.

Opposition to breeding animals created to suffer is growing and organizing. The Alliance for Animals is one of the foremost organizations in the USA. It is in Wisconsin. It is devoted to "increasing public awareness of animal abuse and promoting the humane treatment of all animals. Through its bi-monthly newsletter, action-oriented committees, public programs and affiliated chapters throughout the state, the Alliance responds to a wide spectrum of animal rights issues, including specific instances of cruelty to animals, wildlife management practices, genetic engineering and factory farming." See http://www.allanimals.org/.

Animal experimentation

Throughout history animals have been treated with cruelty. In the past, "...the only 'good' animals were those that proved useful to humans" [Pringle, 1989].

Some, if not most, 'animals' [from fish to birds and insects to serpents, snakes and killer whales] are clearly the enemy of humanity — so says a well-entrenched position in the history of human thought. Nature is 'red in tooth and claw' [Tennyson]. As part of this bloody world of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, animals are not only cruel but clearly at perpetual enmity with humankind. So says one line of thought. Mosquitoes deserve to be swatted, flies too — you betcha. Many animals are little more than bacteria, nuisances at best and deadly germ-carrying enemies at worst. So says the familiar line of thought. Dogs bite and kill kids and deserve to be muzzled, chained or shot. Snakes kill, sharks devour humans, badgers and moles destroy landscapes. Canadian geese pollute environments and spoil the scenic beauty and the odors of Nature. Grasses can poison, fish can bite and kill, and even flowers can hurt and harm humans in many ways. So let's get real about animals, and dismiss this sentimentality — says this same line of reasoning and voice of 'experience.' St. Francis of Assisi was silly and sentimental to preach to the birds, if it ever happened. Animals are fuel for man, and when they are not being merely useful deserve to be experimented upon.

Psychoanalysts help us here. They help us to understand the role of hate, the hatred which humans have for one another amid the frustrations of social living (see Freud, Civilization and its Discontents). Such feelings are socially unacceptable or inexpressible. They can be displaced if they are not sublimated. Animals are an easy target. It is a cliché that a man, angry at his wife, kicks the dog. Why not torture one too — especially if it can be done in the name of such a respectable social endeavor as 'science'.

Nevertheless, there are trends away from indiscriminate animal experimentation. The growing realization that animals DO have feelings, and therefore rights, is being partnered by the emergence of legal limits on indiscriminate animal experimentation, and a desire to altogether eliminate vivisection. The days when so-called 'scientists' can do brain surgery on cats to let them die - unable to dream — in a manic delirium — are fortunately diminishing. It is being realized that such 'science' is no better morally than Nazi experiments on their prisoners.

The resourcefulness of the human mind, inspired by compassion, is being used to develop alternatives to animal testing of products, let alone the 'science' of organized cruelty to animals such as the systematic maternal deprivation of primates.

Compassion for animals is leading to a science with a moral heart and a new definition of rigor!

Animal rights

Animal rights are an emerging field of social justice — and of law. It is a growing trend. Though slow to develop impetus — it was launched in the 1770s when the first book advocating kindness to animals was written — it is picking up momentum now. See http://animalrights.about.com/culture/animalrights/msuborgs.htm?iam=mt. .

As we understand that we do not have to 'rule over' nature but are part of it, the animal rights movement has evolved. Peter Singer, the animal rights activist, puts it simply: animals are capable of suffering and enjoying life, and therefore their interests deserve consideration.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund is "Working for Justice for Animals."

Founded in 1979, ALDF claims to be the country's leading animal rights law organization working nationally to defend animals from abuse and exploitation. ALDF's network of over 750 attorneys is dedicated to protecting and promoting animal rights. Over the past 20 years, they claim to have won 'precedent-setting victories for animals on every front -- in research laboratories, on farms, in the wild and for companion animals.' See: http://www.aldf.org/.

Veterinary medicine

Ranny Green, a 'pet columnist', writing in the Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer, recently summarizes a new book by Vicki Croke of the Boston Globe. It is an account of work in the Vet's Emergency Room at Tufts University. The efforts of these dedicated animal physicians is a convincing demonstration of the higher and higher esteem in which animals are held in society. Trends in Veterinary medicine include greater expenditure by owners, greater physician skill, and greater prolongation of life for animal companions.

What youngsters can perhaps do now is create a Third Millennium 'Hippocratic Oath'— not only for Veterinary medicine practitioners but also for the owners of animals. They will thus learn to develop an experimental ethic for animal care in 21st century society.

Vegetarianism

There are many arguments for Vegetarianism — and many against it. Seehttp://arrs.envirolink.org/ar-voices/schwartz/ for a discussion within Judaism.

Buddhist philosophy, and some strands of Hinduism, definitely decree such compassion for animals as to exclude eating them. Others argue that without the need for meat, most animals would never even exist. Still others argue that the human mouth is clearly designed for vegetables and fruit only. It does seem clear that at least animals bred as eventual food deserve a good life before death.