Animal Writings

As awareness of our global social and environmental messes grows, we are seeing a torrent of thoughtful books, papers and editorial, many of which suggest new directions. When reading through this literature, one is struck by how many writers call for "radical" (or words to that effect) changes in our Western worldview. Such words and thoughts are coming from high-ranking leaders as well as respected scholars.

In March 1992, Vaclav Havel, president of an ethnically divided Czechoslovakia, a former political prisoner of the Communist regime, and thus one who should know, wrote in The New York Times of the social turmoil of the modern era and of impending environmental disaster. "Man's attitude to the world must be radically changed," wrote Havel.

Twenty years earlier, California law professor Christopher D. Stone used substantially the same language in a now-famous law review article that has become one of the "bibles" of the environmental movement. Entitled "Should Trees Have Standing?", Stone wrote of the need for "a radical new conception of man's relationship to the rest of nature." Stone thought this could help in solving our material problems as well in "making us far better humans."

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Theologians have called for radical new views. J. Barrie Shepherd, who wrote Theology for Ecology, called for a "totally new attitude" about the world around us. His colleague of the cloth, Larry Rasmussen, called for a "new ethic," on "less anthropocentric" and "more humble."

Other professionals continue the line of thought...Native American writer Vince Deloria wrote in God is Red: "We face an ecological crisis compounded by a spiritual crisis. We need a radical shift in our world outlook."

The list goes on and on...Whether one reads the complete works of Marston Bates, David Brower, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Rene Debos, Anne and Paul Erlich, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Roderick Nash, or any of the other environmentalist writers, the message is the same: Humanity needs fundamental changes in its relationship with nature.

After having laid down such strong rhetoric, however, the movers and shakers of the environmental movement stop dead in their tracks when they approach The Animal Question—the whole sticky mess of human views toward, relations with, and uses of animals. This part of the Nature Question is oddly off limits. Should a great thinker step on it accidentally, he or she usually jumps back to safety on the remoteness of discussions about trees or abstractions of biodiversity and species.

The Animal Question is regarded as illegitimate, silly, peripheral. Those who address it are regarded as emotional, sentimental, silly, neurotic, misguided and missing the bigger picture of human relations with the living world. One's importance as a thinker on the Nature Question is measured, in part, by how widely one steers away from the Animal Question.

...How would Professor Stone's landmark article have been received if he had entitled it "Should Chimpanzees Have Standing?" Probably his reputation would be very different today. I think that Professor Stone and the great majority of our ponderers of the Nature Question are much more comfortable in their relations with trees and they are with animals. This is a sorry state of affairs in both science and law, for in either discipline the case for extending legal protections to chimpanzees is far stronger than it is for trees.

...[The] Animal Question is the very heart of the Nature Question. For the human mind—which is the sum of human experience—animals have always been the soul, the spirit and embodiment of the living world. To exclude discussion of relations with animals from the discussion of our relations with nature is to exclude the most important part of the discussion. Emotionally, culturally, psychically, symbolically—just about any way you want to measure it—animals are the most vital beings among all the things in the living world. They are fundamental to our worldview; they are central to our sense of experience in this world.

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Let us ask the following question to all of those important thinkers who have proposed "radical" or "fundamental" changes in our worldview and our relations with nature: What does a "radical" or "fundamental" change in worldview mean if it avoids animals—the central, essential beings in the living world—the beings who have always been thought to embody and symbolize the whole of nature?

It is either dishonest or cowardly to call for a sweeping overhaul of the West's dominionistic worldview and then rigidly avoid the very heart of that worldview.

I will admit that the Animal Question is the biggest and the most disturbing part of the Nature Question, but this is the very reason we have to tackle it. For if we try to steer around the Animal Question, then of course we leave it in place, forever troubling our relations with nature. If we avoid it because it is difficult, then I submit we will continue to have difficult relations with the living world. If, as the leading thinkers suggest, we need to come to much better terms with nature—the living world—then we must wade into the Animal Question. The very first step is one of recognition—of seeing how basic, how important it is.

The next step is to feel out the barriers—cultural and emotional—that keep us away from the deeper parts of the Animal Question. When we get our feet wet and wade into it, what fears and questions come up? We need to identify these and explore their sources. When we do, we will see that many of them stem from a kind of prejudice, an attitude of hatred and contempt toward animals. I call this attitude misothery (like misogyny). It is deeply rooted in our agrarian Western culture.

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Do we fear the recognition that we have much in common with animals? Is that because it might take away from our comforting notions of human uniqueness and supremacy?

Do we fear coming to terms with the violence and injustice now institutionalized in our uses of animals on farms and in laboratories?