It is hard for me to fathom the way some people exist. I cannot put myself in others' shoes. Perhaps this is a bad quality. On the other hand, why would I want to exist in the limiting minds that abound so plentifully?
So, there is this man. And he is a man with whom I have never gotten along. But, I could never quite put my finger on WHY. Something was always a little off about him. He always seems to be trying just a little too hard to be fulfilled. Ya know the type of guy who still travels to India during summers even though he's well beyond the age of "finding himself." (Not that I buy into that notion to begin with.) That's the type he is. And it always irks me the wrong way. I thought it was just that we have such different values, and even the values we share we've arrived at from opposing sides. BUT I FIGURED IT OUT PRECISELY TODAY.
He is so damn anthropocentric! Know WHY he needs to backpack across Europe at the age of 40 or whatever it is that he does? He feels he is in this position of privilege. (and as he is a white, human, male living in the U.S. I suppose it would be hard to argue otherwise.) As he is a human, he can think, feel, reason, emote, express himself, etc, etc, etc. These are his God-given rights. And they are given to mankind above all other animals. THAT IS THE WAY HE THINKS. He feels he is naturally privileged above everything else. He was just born that way. He was born better than tigers, great white sharks, the poor lovely white possums (first mammal extinct because of global warming
This is what led me to my discovery. (My discovery about THE REASON WHY I don't like him.) He had a blog post about ethics, and the way the word 'ethics' is being used to express things beyond human to human relationships. He was surprised by this. Surprised that people talk about "ethical" hunting (as if killing something out of greed could ever be ethical). He thought it was just crazy how the word ethical is passing species lines.
Excuse me. . . but, what? Ethics were ever bound by human relations? Since when? I don't know if it's true that ethics come from religion, but aren't there arguments about that? In which case, wouldn't that already be man to god(s) relationships? Aren't there traditions of, say, Kosher laws, which dictate only one ethical way to slaughter something? HOW ANTHROPOCENTRIC TO THINK HUMANS CAN ONLY BE ETHICAL WHEN ANOTHER HUMAN IS INVOLVED. What about the Christian doctrine of being good stewards of the earth? Why is this a new concept to him.
So, Tabby said that this strange man might know something about the etymology of the word ethics or what not. Maybe it did originate as meaning humans duties to other humans or something. But, that's beyond the point. To honestly believe that ethics have not always been extended across species is ignorant and self-assuring. Furthermore, to believe humans are the only ones who HAVE ethics is equally absurd. People asserting such rubbish are just looking for a way to legitimize their elevated social status above other species. Science is now showing that animals beyond humans have ethics.
Experiments on rats (I know, downright evil. Not genuinely ethical on the people's part.) show that rats won't take food if it causes another rat pain. That is not some survival of the fittest, Darwinism, evolution stuff. That is quite the opposite. That is a rat making an ethical decision to put another above him/her self, possibly leading to her/his own demise. Chimpanzees don't show aggression to disabled members of their societies. Once again, an ethical decision. Dolphins and Whales alike experience empathy for the same biological reason humans do. (Something about spindle cells. . . ?)
The point is this: Even IF ethics has some etymology restricting it to human-to-human relationships, and even IF non-human animals are not capable of the same intellectual reasoning as mankind, the fact of the matter remains: humans have always held ethics that transcended inter-personal relations and animals also have their own moral codes––without all the Kantian mumbo-jumbo behind them––that do not have to do with the survival of the fittest. Ergo, the concept of ethics (perhaps not the word) has never been restricted to a discussion of human interaction with other humans. And the fact that this one man would ever surmise as much made me realize why I do not like him. He is a bad person precisely because he places so much damn stock in being a person.
Don't get me wrong. Often I enjoy being a person. I tool feel privileged that I am at the top. I too enjoy the ability to use critical discernment. But I don't spend my life making sure I experience culture and the arts and grappling with impossible theoretical concepts just because I CAN and others can't. I spend my life trying to make a better place for all sentient beings with the understanding that God created us all. God created animals for his glory, and guess what else! He asked that we have just dominion over them. That means a responsibility to them to behave ethically where they are involved.
The End.
Love,
Calla and the Kitties.
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