> From Schopenhauer I learned that we are all essentially at one with our
> animal kin, yet he himself didn't live up to his own insight, and although
> campaigning philosophically against all animal abuse, was not a vegetarian.
>
> Frankly, I think that we are all Nazis (or citizens of a Nazi regime) when
> it comes to animals, and this is the phenomenon I am talking about in this
> post. 'Reality is something that none of us can stand, at any time.'
I wrote those words and have been taken to task about them offline.
Well, I'm sorry, but they still seem both right and logical to me.
(I'll come to PSYCHO in a moment.)
I repeat: Schopenhauer said that we are all essentially one with our animal
kin. Yet we torture and kill millions of animals daily. The perpetrators
of that crime are the Nazis among us.
The annual killing of baby seals in Canada this year targeted 300,000 of
these sentient creatures whose mental development and awareness scarcely
differs from that of human babies of the same age. Yet the creatures are
clubbed and then flayed, many of them still alive and suffering. Their
cruel, mindless killers are some of the Nazis among us.
And we, who condone it, by looking away, are the 'citizens of a Nazi regime'
I spoke of. The Canadian government has tried to cover up what is
happening. When the Sea Shepherd organisation recently sent a ship to
monitor the kill, it was boarded - in international waters - and then
impounded by the Canadian government.
Okay. There's a passage in my book on Hitchcock of which I am unashamedly
proud It is the following sidebar item (which the publishers of the 1999
American edition saw fit to delete):
THE LADY BUYING THE PESTICIDE
The scene in question, which comes after Norman sinks Marion's car in the
swamp, begins on a suitable note of grim levity as a middle-aged customer
(Helen Wallace) in Loomis's Hardware Store contemplates buying a can of
'Spot'. 'They tell you what its ingredients are,' she murmurs, 'and how
it's guaranteed to exterminate every insect in the world, but they do not
tell you whether or not it's painless. And,' she adds, 'I say, insect or
man, death should always be painless.' An audience invariably finds these
remarks funny, as well they might. The phrase 'guaranteed to exterminate
every insect in the world' is especially sombre - it suggests ruthless total
extermination! Likewise, the lady's solicitude about not causing pain
sounds slightly misplaced: 'insect or man' implies that it's okay to kill
humans provided it's done painlessly and humanely! But the topper follows
when the lady buys the pesticide, though she's still uncertain whether it
causes pain. She exits clutching the unwrapped can in front of her, wearing
a beatific smile. Watching her go, Sam and Lila momentarily seem to share
the audience's suspicion that her supposedly harmless manner may have a
darker side ...
- Ken M
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html
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