Here is a bit more background from Porter's essay on the bullfight and some
brief responses to a few comments that people have made.

Porter wrote:
--"Adventure.  The word has become a little stale to me, because it has
been applied too often to the dull physical exploits of professional
'adventurers' who write books about it . . . .  And always always, somebody
is out climbing mountains, and writing books about it, which are read by
quite millions of persons who feel, apparently, that the next best thing to
going there yourself is to hear from somebody who went. . . ."
--"W. B. Yeats remarked . . . that the unhappy man (unfortunate?) was one
whose adventures outran his capacity for experience, capacity for
experience being, I should say, roughly equal to the faculty for
understanding what has happened to one.  The difference then between mere
adventure and a real experience might be this?  That adventure is something
you seek for pleasure, or even for profit, like a gold rush or invading a
country; for the illusion of being more alive than ordinarily, the thing
you will to occur; but experience is what really happens to you in the long
run; the truth that finally overtakes you."

Here Porter draws attention to the illusory aspect of adventure sought and
experienced at the "conventional" level--i.e. that does not rise to the
level of what she calls "experience" ("Experience"?)  She's saying clearly
that adventure is ordinarily what we seek to make our lives extra-ordinary;
but also that it is the rare adventure only which provokes understanding.

And that's why I'm quite sure that Chris's characterization of Porter's
experience as a predictable result of a group or crowd phenomenon ("So what
Porter experienced was a kind of initiation into a participatory emotional
excitation") doesn't get it right.  If this were all Porter was getting at,
we could all go to a professional football game and be done with it:

Chris L.
>I agree, but returning to my earlier remarks, about mind / consciousness
>being a distributed function. That knowledge helps us to understand what
>happens in the bullfight episode.
>The same phenomena happens at public executions, boxing matches, ice hockey,
>football matches, rock concerts,and all similar spectacles. All that is
>required
>is a powerful focus of attention.
>We all know that emotions are contagious. One depressed person can
>easily depress those around, likewise for anger, laughter, and so on.
>If you put 50,000 in a stadium, and sync their feelings, they all experience
>an amplification of emotion, which they would not feel if they were apart
>in a different setting. Try watching a soccer match on tv at home alone ,
>contrasted with actually being there.
>So what Porter experienced was a kind of initiation into a participatory
>emotional excitation, which happens when a crowd share that kind of ritual
>and all become entrained by a dramatic scene.

This seems to me rather entirely to miss the point of Porter's essay.  Yes,
she describes getting carried away in the excitement of the time, but the
understanding of the *meaning* of the bullfight (i.e. true "Experience" in
her terminology) doesn't come until years and years later.  And it is the
reflection upon what the necessary element of Death means to her that makes
all the difference between the bullfight and football (or other crowd
phenomena/other sports).

Here's another passage from the essay that helps make the comparison
between mere adventure and real experience, a (mock heroic?) account of a
mountain climbing adventure:

Porter writes:
--"Adventure is sometimes fun, but not too often.  Not if you can remember
what really happened; all of it.   It passes, seems to lead nowhere much,
is something to tell friends to amuse them, maybe.  'Once upon a time,' I
can hear myself saying, for I once said it, 'I scaled a cliff in Boulder,
Colorado, with my bare hands, and in Indian moccasins, bare-legged.  And at
nearly the top, after six hours of feeling for toe- and fingerholds, and
the gayest feeling in the world that when I got to the top I should see
something wonderful, something that sounded awfully like a bear growled out
of a cave, and I scuttled down out of there in a hurry.'  This is a fact.
I had never climbed a mountain in my life, never had the least wish to
climb one.  But there I was, for perfectly good reasons, in a hut on a
mountainside in heavenly sunny though sometimes stormy weather, so I went
out one morning and scaled a very minor cliff; alone, unsuitably clad, in
the season when rattlesnakes are casting their skins; and if it was not a
bear in that cave, it was some kind of unfriendly animal who growls at
people; and this ridiculous escapade, which was nearly six hours of the
hardest work I ever did in my life, toeholds and fingerholds on a cliff,
put me to bed for just nine days with a complaint the local people called
'muscle poisoning.'  I don't know exactly what they meant, but I do
remember clearly that I could not turn over in bed without help and in
great agony.  And did it teach me anything?  I think not, for three years
later I was climbing a volcano in Mexico, that celebrated unpronounceably
named volcano, Popocatepetl which everybody who comes near it climbs sooner
or later; but was that any reason for me to climb it? No.  And I was
knocked out for weeks, and that finally did teach me: I am not supposed to
go climbing things.  Why did I not know in the first place?  For me, this
sort of thing must come under the head of Adventure."

What is Porter telling us? Well, for one thing, that she has lived the
enviable life of "adventurer"; that she has traveled extensively; and also
that she has even endured the pain that other adventure writers insist must
be present in order for the adventure to be a morally virtuous and
spiritually uplifting experience.  But are her mountain climbing
experiences worth relating? Not in her mind, for they have taught her
nothing real, nothing of substance.

She continues:
--"I think it is a pastime of rather an inferior sort; yet I have heard men
tell yarns like this only a very little better: their mountains were
higher, or their sea was wider, or their bear was bigger and noisier, or
their cliff was steeper and taller, yet there was no point whatever to any
of it except that it happened.  This is not enough.  May it not be,
perhaps, that experience, that is, the thing that happens to a person
living from day to day, is anything at all that sinks in?  is, without
making any claims, a part of your growing and changing life? what it is
that happens in your mind, your heart?"

Her questions here help demonstrate, to my mind, why suggested substitutes
to hunting may not be satisfactory alternatives.

For example, Chris Lees writes:
>ok, well take up photography and sound recording, and get all those kicks
>by excercising the
>skill without killing the creature.Or make potholing or scuba diving or
>hangliding your 'art'.
>
and L. Dangutis suggests hiking:
>(I've included my favorite quote to help you out here.)
>I get the same aestetic worth from hiking without killing those around me.
>

I don't think any of these substitutes will do, at least not automatically.
In partial response to Chris: I'm not sure one can just drop an activity
like hunting for some other surrogate activity.  Also I think that the
reductionist portrayal of hunting (or photography or scuba) as simply
getting one's kicks from the exercise of skills misses the larger
possibilities of meaning that Porter alludes to in her response to the
bullfight.

Whereas in response to L. Dangutis, I'm not sure that one can even say, "I
get the same aestetic worth from hiking without killing those around me."
How would one possibly know that one is getting "the *same*" aesthetic
worth as from hunting?  For my part, I seriously doubt that hiking can
yield the same kind of real Experience that Porter describes as coming from
her reflections upon the bullfight.  In this sense, hiking is probably a
much more aesthetically innocuous activity than the bullfight, more on a
par with Chris's football matches above than with either hunting or
bullfighting. If nothing else, hiking simply does not represent as much of
an intellectual challenge to the participant, to borrow from Richard
Miller's formulation of a scale for objective aesthetic judgment.  For as
Dreamer observes in response to Porter:

>  The excerpt is powerful,
>well-written, and pertinent.  I also appreciate that you are coming
>squarely to grips with the essence of the issue: a real or perceived
>blood-lust in our nature.  As I mentioned before, I think this is a much
>more honest way of dealing with the hunting issue than disingenuous talk
>about animals' incapacity for suffering, or hunters' overriding
>aesthetic values.

While I am not sure I agree with Dreamer that the "essence" of the issue is
necessarily "blood-lust" in our nature, per se, I nonetheless am in full
agreement that the Porter essay more meaningfully confronts the
significance and importance of Death in the blood sports (like hunting or
bullfighting) than do the numerous well intentioned, high-minded, but empty
calls for alternatives to the various blood sports heard in many quarters
today.

(And yet I still think that "disingenuous talk about animals' incapacity
for suffering, or hunters' overriding aesthetic values," remains an
important part of the "network of considerations," borrowing Anthony
Weston's phrase again, considerations that we need to take into account in
fully thinking about hunting.)

Now, to change topics somewhat.  I guess my question to Dreamer at this
point is: Why is Callenbach's literary vision of ritualized battle, where
death to humans can occur, more acceptable than hunting, where humans are
safe? Or bullfighting, where the matador is not?  "It was violence for its
own sake, acknowledging itself, not hidden behind lies, hypocracy and
rationalization." The distinction doesn't make very much sense to me--but
I'm sure the problem is on my end, not yours.

Dreamer:
>A part of Callenbach's "Ecotopia" comes to mind -- the way in which that
>society embraced part of its violent shadow through ritualized battle.
>Callenbach envisioned games between otherwise friendly co-inhabitants of
>the same society, which were somewhat controlled, but still contained
>the possibility of serious injury and occasional death.  It was violence
>for its own sake, acknowledging itself, not hidden behind lies,
>hypocracy and rationalization.  That literary vision has more appeal to
>me than sport hunting or bull-fighting, especially because it would meet
>some of the other "play" ethics articulated earlier: voluntariness and a
>level playing field.
>
>I appreciate Chris's return to this issue of voluntariness: "The vital
>distinction is that the child is not a voluntary participant. The child
>receives damage and harm, as the result of the molester's actions and
>enjoyment.
>To my mind, this is exactly paralleled by the hunter and the killed
>prey.
>The hunted creature is not a voluntary participant, but receives pain,
>fear, and death so that the hunters can satisfy the drive to experience
>enjoyment, the satisfaction
>of urges, the orgasmic reward of having prevailed over 'the other'."

I understand that you place your distinction between hunting and Ecotopian
ritualized battle on the question of voluntariness--okay, I see that as
consistent with everything you've written to date.  But now I'm going to
ask a question that truly is just me thinking out loud--I'm not trying to
upset Chris or anything like that .  .  .  .    When we talk about the
child suffering abuse at the hands of the abuser, part of our moral
evaluation of that act is the fact that the abuse is done against the
child's *will.*   Likewise, when Chris says he has no problem with
followers of de Sade voluntarily agreeing to engage in mutual acts of
sado-masochism, he says that's fine--because the participants are engaging
in these acts on their own free *will.*

But then killing an animal is wrong, because the animal does not volunteer,
i.e. is not a party to the contract, so to speak.

But does the animal so acted against have *free will*?  How is it exactly,
that one can say, "The child receives damage and harm, as the result of the
molester's actions and enjoyment. To my mind, this is exactly paralleled by
the hunter and the killed prey"?  Where is the exact parallel?

I'm not sure there is an exact parallel. This is one reason why Tom Regan
so harshly dismisses contractarian approaches to animal rights--the animal
has no free will, and so cannot hold rights on that (contract) basis.  (It
may be that an animal can hold rights on a "conferred rights" basis, or on
the basis of some other rationale.) But I'm not sure the voluntariness
issue is as relevant or important as your or Chris's thinking above makes
it out to be.

Just curious what you (or any others) think.  Thanks,

Jim Tantillo


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%