I have been listening with great interest to all the nonsense being talked
about the protests against animal testing - I forget the name of the
company, but it's up your way Chris
For those who don't know about this, it's a company / facility for testing
pharmaceuticals on animals which has been targeted by protests and claims to
be in severe trouble - shareholders getting out etc
an executive described the campaign as terrorism
during the afternoon I heard a speaker for the campaign being interviewed
aggressively & he asked what was so bad about "outing" (my word) those who
experiment on animals when there had been so much "name and shame" here of
paedophiles
oh now come now oh really but you can't no look
etc
but his question wasn't answered
and just now a man who doesn't want to be stopped from hunting foxes with
dogs said on national radio that everyone in the government is plotting to
destroy the countryside
a propos something a while back
I was taught in religious knowledge (RC) that animals have souls but the are
mortal souls which die with the body
L
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Hamilton-Emery" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 17 January 2001 20:55
Subject: Re: unfashionable thought
| I very much doubt that such distinctions can or should be made, similar
| propositions used to be made about race -- as opposed to species. What
| disturbs at the heart of such assumptions is the idea of superiority. Such
a
| line of thought leads us to think of (other) animals as commodities. As
| food, or as an acceptable medium for experimentation. I'm not here to
| persuade people of veganism, vegetarianism, or the pros and cons of
| vivisection; but from a genetic perspective we are all kin. I have always
| felt language is not just a symptom of alienation but the constructor of
it.
|
| best
| C
|
| > I think the Hindus got it right. An interesting definition of
| > consciousness (courtesy of the neurologist Antonio Damasio), which
allows
| > other animals the possession of things like feelings, is that
| > consciousness is a state of _knowing_ that one is feeling something.
| > This _knowing_ rather than simply being is quite probably a uniquely
| > human characteristic, (with the retractable thumb, I suppose) and
perhaps
| > accounts for our peculiar kind of destructiveness as well as phenomena
| > like poems. Of course we can't know what an animal without speech
knows,
| > and this opacity pertains to our relationships with other human beings,
| > inner lives being notoriously difficult to quantify and communicate. I
| > can't help thinking of language as a symptom of an alienation (and here
| > all sorts of associations rush in - The Fall, Enkidu etc - which take
| > this division of ourselves into knowing as a separation from the being
| > world.)
|
|