Coetzee- The lives of Animals

Hi all!

I was, and still am, so nervous to post the main blog for this week. One of the reasons is that eating and killing animals for human ends has never been a problem in my country and in my life. I am afraid of saying something ignorant or stupid. I just don’t know, and should I be sorry? On this topic, I have the inclination to use ignorance as an excuse, and I will try to suppress it, but still, I do not know, and I have never thought about it. So please excuse me if my argument is naïve, shallow, or illogical.

Firstly, I would like to talk about how this topic is related to the previous topic, mass incarceration of people of color. There was a time in history that white American truly believed that black people were less than human, just a little bit more than a beast. Aristotle said that slavery is natural because there are two types of beings: one that cannot use reason and can only work with the body, who deserves to be the natural slave, and the other can use reason and logical thinking, who is by nature superior and should be the master. European colonizers used this logic to argue that black people, since they were savage and could not use reason, they should remain as slave of the white men. Moreover, the notion of teleology—everything is created for an end, a reason, a purpose—is deeply ingrained in the mindset of the European, so this is the logic: Black people are created, and they are natural slave, so we are entitled to use them for our purpose, if not, what else are they good for? And can I say that we use the same reason to talk about our use of animals for food, clothing, safety, and medicine? However, I am unwilling to say that we are doing any great injustice to animals, and even if we do, it is a different kind of injustice that we cannot, and should not, compare it to what happened to the Jews and people of colors. (now, I start to sound like a horrible person! But it’s fine. Call me out and criticize me! That’s fine. Don’t be nice!)

Even though I understand Elizabeth Costello’s logic, I cannot agree with her. To me, there is still something special about human being that I hold above everything else. And the comparison between the Holocaust and the slaughter house Costello used is just absurd to me. That comparison is wrong because, as Mr. Stern the poet put it, “the inversion insults the memory of the death. And it also trades on the horrors of the camps in a cheap way.” I am not saying that there is no similarity between the two, but the comparison itself is just wrong. Since I don’t understand religion, I don’t want to use the religious argument that we are made in the likeness of God so that we are superior to animals. I also hesitate to play the technological advancement card to prove our superiority because that is just a wrong Westernized standardized measurement that even I will lose the game myself. We just do not know about animals and what really is happening in their minds, so that any assumption and comparison is just not enough and is just another iteration of human arrogance and imposition.

I am identified most with Norma in the story, especially when Norma said that relativism leads to intellectual paralysis. If we started to think about animals’ perspectives, should we start thinking about plants’ too? What do we know about any of them, or any of us any way? And now we should ask: where to draw the line? We are trapped in the concerns about those philosophical questions and the different unfathomable supposedly existing perspectives of plants and animals. Yes, we can try to put us in their positions and feel their pains, but I refuse to think about those pains all the time. It is exhausting. It is not because I am lazy, or maybe I am, but I just want to save my energy for other things, like the pain and suffering of other human beings. To me, the use of animals for human’s purpose should not be a moral question.

People eat everything in my country: grasshoppers, rats, animals’ intestine, and partially shelled balut eggs, one of the reasons is that we were starving, and another is that we can. My neighbor used to herd pigs, and at night, they killed the pigs. I cannot count how many nights that I slept in that horrible sounds, and how many times that those sounds truly sounded like human’s call for help and mercy. I grew up in that environment, based on your standard, is my soul messed up?

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Coetzee, "The Lives of Animals"

            “…we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing [animals] ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them” (119).  This excerpt, taken from Elizabeth Costello’s lecture, “The Philosophers and the Animals” illustrates the idea that humans are committing violations equal to that of the Third Reich, in their harsh slaughter of animals for food purposes.  She makes an interesting and valid point when she maintains that we deemed the Germans inhumane because of a kind of “willed ignorance” on their part about the slaughter of the Jews, and then argues that the major crime of the Holocaust was the way in which the Nazis treated humans like animals.  However, Elizabeth formulates a controversial argument when she compares all humans to the Nazis in our slaughter of animals- that we mercilessly raise and kill innocent animals, and then walk away feeling that our conscience is still clean.

At first, I was a little taken aback and somewhat angered by her comparison between the Nazis treatment of the European Jews and our treatment of animals, because it was hard to imagine that in eating meat, I was helping to perpetuate a process that was equal, or worse, than the Holocaust.  However, upon reading more of the lectures, I realized that this was probably due to this accepted philosophical belief that humans are, in a sense, morally superior, because of the notion that humans have abilities that humans do not have, such as abstract reasoning and fear of death (144-145).  Some of the audience even used the religious argument, that man was the only being created in the image of God, to prove man’s superiority and therefore the acceptability of slaughtering animals. 

Elizabeth Costello counters these arguments.  She maintains that using the inability of animals to speak/reason as a justification for their inferiority and prove that humans are the only people over which we don’t have the power of life and death highlight the falsity of the argument (151-152).  She asserts, “…in history, embracing the [superior] status of man has entailed slaughtering and enslaving a race of divine or else divinely created beings and bringing down on ourselves a curse” (154).  This quote seemed especially interesting when looking at previous subjects and atrocities committed through out history. We can argue that the slaughter of animals does not matter because of their inferior status, but haven’t humans used this justification all through out history to legitimize the torture and destruction of entire groups of people?  The “inferior intelligence” and “unclean” argument that we use when justifying the slaughter of animals seems awfully similar to that used by the Nazis in exterminating the Jews, and in genocides committed through out history.  The idea of a superior status has been utilized in justifying the Americans’, and other groups’, atrocious treatment of entire groups of people through out history.

When looking at it this way, it does not seem so ridiculous to compare the daily massacre of animals to that of the Jews in the Holocaust.  Each day we raise animals and herd them into abusive conditions only to kill them later for our own enjoyment. We too close our hearts to sympathy for these creatures, just as they did so many years ago.  

We claim that humans are superior because of our reason and intelligent skills, but we seem to be the only beings that terrorize and kill other members of our own species because of ideas like “ethnic cleansing” and as a source of entertainment, as in the torture at Abu Ghraib.

While I felt the comparison was a little far-fetched in the beginning, I was surprised to find myself recognizing the reason behind her arguments.  However, I wonder how much of an effect these arguments can really have on people.  The process of killing animals has become so institutionalized and accepted, as have other forms of mass violence through out history, that I wonder if it is possible to really get people to change their views and habits. Is it a fight worth fighting?  While I accept her arguments, I realize how easy it would be to continue to close our hearts to sympathy and just go on with life eating meat, because it tastes good and provides nutrients that we are told we need.  I recognize the atrocious conditions in which we subject animals, but found myself struggling with the right action to take after this acknowledgement.  

Coetzee

 I found the Coetzee excerpt extremely confusing at first but it gained clarity as I read. I felt similarly about the character of Elizabeth Costello who seemed pretty much crazy for most of the piece.  Although I do agree with her argument that testing animal intelligence and consciousness through human standards is limiting, I felt like her stance on reason was hypocritical. I agree with the comment on page 152 that “the very fact that you can be arguing against this reasoning, exposing its falsity, means that you put a certain faith in the power of reason, of true reason as opposed to false reason”. It is quite possible that I am missing something here because honestly I was pretty confused by her for about the first half of the reading. This may also have to do with the fact that I am generally not really an animal person. I like most dogs and that is about it.

On that note, I found it very insightful when the son mentioned that animal rights had to focus on jaguars and other beautiful, exotic, or cuddly animals to reel in support when in reality they are mostly fighting for chickens, cows and pigs. This propaganda idea was really interesting to consider because it focused on appearance. I wonder if this has something to do with the argument against killing human babies- not only are they helpless but also beautiful in some ways, maybe? I completely and totally agreed with the argument on 143 against self-consciousness and shamelessness as traits which set humans apart from animals. Instead, the speaker said that we found it unacceptable to kill and eat babies because we must protect our own. Clearly humans are disgusted by the idea of cannibalism. This point was in juncture with the idea that we are not separate from animals because of our level of thinking. Their mental capacity does not necessarily change the importance or significance of their lives. I think that Elizabeth agreed with this argument but took it a step further; she viewed their deaths not only against morality and ethics but as acts of genocide, mass murder.

When Elizabeth first mentioned the connections between the holocaust, death camps, and mass killings to animal slaughter I agreed with the poet who wrote her the letter that this comparison was too far and in fact insulting. In the end, however, I did find myself horrified for a moment at her description of lampshades and soap made of human parts as metaphors for what she felt about the use of animals in our society. This attitude, her battle with the “am I crazy?” kind of question was present not only in these last pages but throughout. Whenever asked really what she was arguing or why she couldn’t really answer, it was just instinctive. I think this was a really interesting way for the author to set up the story, leaving it open to the reader to grapple with each argument and consider the underlying ethics or reasoning despite her denouncing those concepts.  

Norma’s argument that people who categorized themselves by what they did not eat were doing so in an effort to create a hierarchy amongst their peers was interesting. She argued that by saying that they could not eat one thing or another it was presumed that the reason had to do with cleanliness and therefore they could be considered elite because they were cleaner. I also thought it was interesting that groups define themselves by what they do not eat rather than what they do. When these things were brought up over dinner Elizabeth also happened to mention that in eating animal flesh (I hate that word) we are turning it into our own, that in fact they are part of us and we are part of them. I found this extremely disgusting to think about, especially because I am already pretty squirmy and specific about the meat that I eat, unfortunately more so in terms of the idea of eating body parts rather than animal rights related reasons.

I would like to finish by connecting to our past subjects. I had never considered why it is we use prisons as punishment, only accepted that it was the way we punished. Elizabeth says we use prisons because “the freedom of the body to move in space is targeted as the point at which reason can most painfully and effectively harm the being of the other” (132). I found this extremely interesting not only in terms of human confinement but also in animal confinement. That in confining bodies we are somehow confining minds, not ideas necessarily as Jackson argued, because those can flow freely always, but just the sheer effect that incarceration of any sort has on a living being.

Humans treating animals as POW’s was also very interesting in relation to our focus on war crimes and how we hold those criminals accountable or not for what they have done based on the dehumanization that took place. The article argued that we treat our animals with contempt and without law the way we may have thought those criminals treated POW’s in Guantanamo etc. Lastly, I thought the idea of all animals being programmed to fight for their lives was really poignant. I liked the story of the chicken screaming in death and how it had “spoken”. It reminded me of Jackson maybe not textually specifically but just in his nature.

Alexander, Jackson, and Newton

This week’s readings dealt with the elaborate systems of control in place in our society, which are embedded, discriminatory, biased, and powerful suggesting that we need to move away from ideas such as reforms or reorganizations and towards a revolution. Alexander discusses this system of control through the criminal justice system, claiming that it is wrought with political disenfranchisement and legalized discrimination in multiple realms. (Alexander 191) Although these ideas have been discussed throughout Alexander’s book, what became apparent in chapter 5 and the other readings is that these systems that perpetuate racial discrimination are not new but rather have adapted to modern times. These systems, such as The Jim Crow Laws and the present justice system, have consistently defined race in different time periods. Black once meant slave, but now means criminal (Alexander, 193). The issue remains then that not only do these issues exist, but they are so embedded into our society and culture that they continue to morph and change in order to get around the new laws created to attempt to eradicate racial discrimination. By having prisoners “out of site, out of mind” both within the prison and the places they tend to be released to afterwards, our society becomes blind to the reality behind what our criminal justice system is doing: using its power, in ways that are not explicitly discriminatory, to keep blacks repressed (Alexander, 183) Alexander discusses Young’s birdcage example explaining how each wire represents a different way of oppressing an individual, and the multiple wires woven together build a trap almost impossible to escape from (Alexander, 184). In my opinion, one main issue that keeps perpetuating this birdcage of oppression, and therefore allowing discrimination of different races to occur, is the ignorance of our society. Perhaps we claim knowledge of overarching problems like the rate of mass incarceration, but the level and numerous subsystems (how arrests, prosecution, imprisonment etc. works) that deepen the discrimination often remain invisible. This is not to shame anyone for not knowing, for I myself am naïve in many areas. So what then needs to happen if these systems keep getting “fixed” and then resurface? Jackson would state that a revolution, not reform, should to occur.

Perhaps the issue with our solutions to fix inequalities is that we just rearrange systems in place, when what we need to do is completely change them. As Jackson states, “revolution within a modern industrial capitalist society can only mean the overthrow of all existing property relations and the destruction of all institutions that directly or indirectly support existing property relations.” (Jackson, 7) Reform, he claims, is merely reordering and reshaping the systems that are already in place. What needs to happen is the creation of a completely new form of economics and culture, built from a recognition that it is not only the actual practices in place that are discriminatory, but the systems themselves. Jackson calls for an appreciation of improvements from the past and the attempts made to fight for equality, but also demands new actions that do not rely on old practices; actions that tend to hold more force and violence, as it is time to stop using words and time to fight. (Jackson, 12) In order to deal with some of the ignorance I mentioned above, people need to work on raising consciousness not only on the discrimination and oppression that is occurring, but also the idea that each person is part of a universal action and interaction. (Jackson, 22) Revolutions rely on the connectedness of all those involved to challenge and expose the discrimination such as the criminal justice system. However, revolutions are not always pretty things, and there also needs to be an acceptance that systems need to completely change, an idea that will inevitably be met with large resistance.

What strikes me the most when discussing ideas such as the discrimination embedded in the criminal justice system and the revolution needed to change these systems is how easy it is to forget the fact that you are talking about people and the treatment they are receiving. As Newton discusses, people are not inanimate objects but are beings that are filled with human spirit, beliefs, and ideas of freedom. When we discriminate and incarcerate people in prisons, we are not just locking up a body behind bars, but a mind as well. This is where our criminal justice system becomes problematic if people who should not be behind bars are put there. Newton claims that, “the human whole is much greater than the sum of its parts” and “walls, bars, and guards cannot conquer or hold down an idea”, yet those same bars that trap someone and give them a prison label can break down that human spirit. I begin to really see the importance of not just looking at these discussions as ones involving themes, systems, and policies, but directly affecting the lives of many human beings.

Alexander, Lind and Jackson

            In doing last Thursday’s reading as well as this weeks reading, I began to form a connection between Lind’s article Imprisoning Women: The Unintended Victims of Mass Imprisonment and Alexander’s chapter “The New Jim Crow.” The connection I formed was how the unintended imprisonment of mass amounts of women consequently affects black youth and ultimately leads to the continuation of the caste system. Alexander has consistently made the point the majority of people in jail are black men; however if we are to consider Lind’s point that the War on Drugs has also led to substantially more women ending up in jails, ultimately many black youth are left without families. Therefore Alexander’s argument that, “throughout the black community, there is widespread awareness that black ghetto youth have few, if any, realistic options, and therefore dealing drugs can be an irresistible temptation (Alexander, 2010, p. 209),” is just the inevitable out growth of a system that targets all people residing in inner cities and creates a pattern in which others are forced into drugs to survive. Alexander goes on to argue that, “for ghetto youth, drug sales…are often a means of survival, a means of helping to feed and clothe themselves and their families. The fact that this “career” path leads almost inevitably to jail is often understood as an unfortunate fact of life, part of what it means to be poor and black in America (Alexander, 2010, p. 209).” This should not be a fact of life. In a country that promotes equality for all, it should not be that the fact of life for most white suburban kids that they will get an education and go to college, but for others the fact of life is a bad education with the better option being to start a life outside of school. Therefore, the connection I am beginning to make is that the new caste system is a multi-faceted system that perpetuates and builds off of it’s many different sections.  

             If one were to stop and think about the implications of this system, it becomes evident that it is not just mass incarceration, but a total system that allows mass incarceration to go unquestioned. For example, we know that the majority of black men are in prisons, but as more black women are ending up in jail, black youth are forced into situations in which getting involved with drugs is not necessarily something they want to do but something they need to do to survive. While we could argue that if they were to stay in school and get an education then maybe the system could change, it is hard to think about staying in a failing school in which the odds are also against you, as a solution to the problem. Furthermore as Alexander uses Tommie Selby’s argument, “individuals are forced to make choices in an environment they did not choose. They would surely prefer to have a broad array of good opportunities (Alexander, 2010, p. 217).” Therefore people are being forced to make decisions they do not want to make as a result of the conditions the rest of society has provided them with. As Alexander says, “the genius of the current caste system…is that it appears voluntary (Alexander, 2010, p. 215).” It is genius precisely because it seems voluntary and therefore it goes unquestioned by those in positions of power, predominantely whites who are unaffected by such conditions. If those in power do not see a problem, then there is no need to “fix” anything; however there is nothing voluntary about a system that has been created to promote one group’s status in society and take away from others. Furthermore, it is easy for outsiders to say they should just not sell drugs or be involved in crime if they know the negative outcomes, but is that outcome worse than the conditions of inequality that are already being subject to? And what happens when the only option many of the black youth are left with is crime?  

            Our capitalist society is built off a need for an underclass. It is easy for this to remain true under the current system in which blacks end up in jail a disproportionate amount. Ultimately this leads me to consider Alexander’s use of Tommie Selby’s question of who’s responsibility is it to provide a better set of circumstances to people suffering in this caste system? And furthermore to what extent is this actually possible? This is inevitably a question of morals. My argument would fall into a category of we are all to some extent responsible and also are all responsible to provide better circumstances; however this is not an easy task as we would not be competing with individuals, we are competing against a system that has been embedded within the structure of our society. Furthermore, the changes that would need to occur, as Jackson argues, would involve a redistribution of the properties, which inevitably means a change in elite status. Therefore, after reading Jackson, it seems as though the only real answer is for a mass change to occur, but the likely hood that mass changes will occur is slim. Therefore my closing question is, to what extent are those in positions such as ours (educated, in college at a private university) responsible for changing these conditions? While I am a proponent of education for all, merely changing who can and will be educated does not seem like enough in this situation. But would reallocating funds from prisons to education be the realistic start for change in our society? 

Alexander, Abu-Jamal, and Brown

This week’s readings focused primarily on the ways in which the criminal justice system perpetuates its own flaws and weaknesses. Although the percentages of people of all races involved in drug crimes are relatively equivalent, African Americans and Latinos are targeted far more than white Americans. Alexander provides evidence of this: in a report done in 2000, white students use cocaine and heroin at a rate 7 times higher than black students and crack cocaine 8 times the rate of black students. This study also found that white youth between the ages of 12 and 17 are a third more likely to have sold illegal drugs than black youth (Alexander, 99). However, regardless of these statistics, prisons are undeniably populated by minorities. Black men have been admitted to state prisons on drug charges at a rate 13 times higher than white men (Alexander, 100). Of all people imprisoned for drug offenses, three-fourths have been either black or Latino (Alexander, 98).

These disproportionate rates are made possible by the fact that law enforcement officers are given free rein in the War on Drugs. There are far too many cases of illegal drug use throughout the country; at least 10% of all Americans violate drug laws every year (Alexander, 123).  These levels of offenses force law enforcement officers to narrow down their search into specific areas and onto specific targets. They are given immense amounts of discretion regarding who to “stop, search, arrest, and charge for drug offenses, thus ensuring that conscious and unconscious racial beliefs and stereotypes will be given free rein” (Alexander, 103). Many departments turn their attention, therefore, to the inner cities, arguing that these are the most compacted region for drug offenses; more people in a smaller area allow officers to spot drug offenses easier and more efficiently. What this results in, however, is the ability for law enforcement officers to use racial biases whether intentionally or not to determine who to target and stop.

The targeting of minorities within inner cities results in the disproportionate percentage of minorities incarcerated. Regardless of the evidence provided to the courts, the justice system itself makes it impossible to prove racial discrimination. Through a string of court decisions, the Supreme Court has consistently closed the door to challenges of racial discrimination within the judicial system.  With Whren vs. United States the Court was able to determine that police officers are able to use minor traffic violations as an excuse to stop motorists for drug investigations (Alexander, 108). This legalized the ability for police officers to use race as a reason to stop and search motorists as long as another explanation for the stop could be provided. In McCleskey vs. Kemp, the Supreme Court determined that racial bias in sentencing could not be challenged under the 14^th Amendment without clear proof of conscious, discriminatory intent (Alexander, 109). As long as no one explicitly stated race as a reason for the sentencing chosen in a case, racial discrimination could not be argued. In Purkett vs. Elm the Court ruled in favor of an attorney’s ability to remove a juror from a case for any reason, regardless of how trivial it may seem (Alexander, 122). This drastically limited a defendant’s ability to be tried by his peers; a right granted to him in the Sixth Amendment. Black defendants no longer had access to a jury of people like himself, but in actuality would be tried by people who may very well seek the worst punishment regardless of the evidence of the case.

The McCleskey case made it possible for attorneys to choose punishment for a crime for whatever reason they may find. This results in uneven punishments between black, white, and Latino criminals committing the same crime. In 2000 a study found that among youth who had never been to a juvenile prison, black kids were more than 6 times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for the same crimes (Alexander, 118). In Georgia prosecutors sought the death penalty in 70% of cases involving a black defendant and white victims, but only 19% involving white defendants and black victims (Alexander, 110). These numbers indicate an obvious difference between the ways in which attorneys approach cases involving black or white defendants. They are far more likely to ask for a far more severe punishment of a black defendant than a white one.

What all of this creates is a cyclical process within the justice system. As the former New Jersey attorney general said, law enforcement officers point to the racial breakdown within our prisons as justification for targeting minorities, but the numbers of blacks and Latinos within the system are in fact the product of racial profiling, not a justification for the behavior (Alexander, 134). African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately in our prisons because of racial discrimination and bias. The numbers are not a reflection on the actual facts of crime rates; they are evidence that the justice system perpetuates its own misguided behaviors.

Alexander, Brown, and Abu-Jamal

This week’s reading elucidated how both structural and individual prejudices play a role in creating and perpetuating racial discrimination in the penal system. Our legal policies and the media structurally produce the discrimination. Law enforcement personal and we as recipients of the media, then internalize structurally created discrimination and project individual prejudice. These practices maintain our caste system in the United States with the privileged whites safely at the top. Regan’s war on drugs helped to make this kind of discrimination possible and his campaign made people firstly think the war existed, and produced an image of blacks being those responsible for the problem. For more than just crimes involving drugs, the media ensures that many view blacks as usual suspects who commit crimes with no excuse other than being thugs and evil. Brown calls the Western press the “Fourth Estate, the fourth arm of the ruling class…the last branch of the ruling power structure” (Brown, 37). I thought this was a good explanation for how the media works. We must examine who is in charge of running our news stations, papers, and websites, and more often than not, it is the “ruling class” of privileged whites.  The media has been successful in presenting the crimes committed by white people as unfortunate circumstances in which psychological and social misfortunes caused a person to behave in an irrational way. On top of the media manipulating national sentiment towards crimes committed by people of color, the prosecution process is also biased towards a black defendant. Juries often end up being composed of all-white jurors, which by no means is a jury of one’s own peers. However, it is easy to make up reasons other than race as a to why a black person is not qualified to be on a jury. Furthermore, jury lists are often based off DMV lists, so that people of color who are less likely to have cars or register to vote, are excluded.

With all the adversity blacks must face after being accused of a crime, the practices that allow for the actual charges are just as racially discriminatory.  Once again, we see colorblind policies at work that legally make discrimination easier. The Supreme Court argues that pulling people over for traffic violations means anyone can be searched for drugs, so it is not prejudiced.  However, police can racially profile on an individual level. It is up to their own discretion and blacks are often unreasonably pulled over and searched simply because of their race. Police also engage in discriminatory practices in their choices of where to search for drugs. They often pick the “hood” and argue it is due to the high frequency of drug trafficking. However, frat houses and other white neighborhoods are just, if not more likely to have drugs. This has always amazed me, how it is so obvious that certain people have drugs, but probably because they are white and have connections to some type of political power, police act oblivious. In the “hood” drug deals are more public because there is less space to conduct deal behind closed doors. This argument makes drug raids in ghettos seem race neutral but Alexander argues that ghettos were created to “contain and control groups of people defined by race” (Alexander, 132).

What was even more disturbing to me than what I have already mentioned, is how hopeless it seems for people of color to file law suits against discriminatory practices by law enforcement. There are so many hurdles to jump over; it is totally understandable why one may give up on the whole process. Furthermore, there is a risk that the law enforcement one is trying to sue could turn the tables and get the person of color into more trouble. Finally, some lawsuits simply cannot happen because neither the state or police can be sued for damages and city departments are often off limits as well. This leaves me to wonder, if our legal system cannot be used to combat this prejudice, what can other than a revolution of some sort?