A letter regarding our western view point

We can only start from where we are at, and that is a western view point, for us westerners.  I am reminded of one of my favourite people in Oxford, a buddhist monk who everyone knows as he spends most of his days walking round town and smiling at people.  He is known for the readiness of his laughter.  He teaches meditation, and a friend recently said to him that after years of meditation, he was just realising the point to which he felt more than ever that he was just a beginner.  The monk laughed and said 'you are a westerner, you are always a beginner'.  There are things in our culture and consciousness that we imbibe from our mother's knee onwards. In those things, we can progress far, but in the things we come to later, perhaps we always remain beginners.

I think it is important though, to see that oneness with nature is not an eastern philosophy anymore than a western one.  I would say that it is not even a philosophy, it is a fact, as science increasingly is proving.  It is the denial of that fact that causes much of the dis-ease in our society, our 'western' culture, as we are living in denial of our essential nature.

More than that, I would say that oneness with nature is the basis of western culture, as it is all cultures.  Capitalism, materialism, consumerism... these are not a western culture.  They are things that have been added on recently, they are Johnny-come-latelies.  They have come to prevalence only in the last few centuries, where as our true western culture has evolved over millenia.  It is the culture of herbalists who ask permission of the root before they dig it up and ask the blessing of the leaf before they pick it.  It is the culture the stories our mothers still tell us, of dark forests and deep rivers and living trees and dragons and caves.  It is the culture of standing stones and secret glades and high places that still draw us on sundays and bank holidays.  It is the culture that calls us to sit round a bonfire at the slightest excuse, and to play in the snow, despite its inconvenience.  It is the culture that calls millions of us to allotments and gardens and conservation projects and why doctors now offer the 'green gym' projects on prescription... because nature is the thing that makes us well.

So these are our starting points, the places where we don't have to scratch far beneath the surface of our society to find our true 'western culture'.  No deeper than we have to scratch beneath the English soil to find the remains of those times.

Miriam Jangles

Anthropomorphism and Nature - Part II

In the first part of this article I argued against the sentiments of anthropomorphism - that is, applying human characteristics to natural elements. Now I would like to continue by arguing that we do not need to make something human in order to be concerned with it, and that we should not harm the 'sacred' phenomena that is life.

Animals do not need to be changed into human shape to qualify as 'moral agents'. If we accept the typically scientific world view that things exist outside of our perception, that the world exists independent of being observed by us, then the implications for all life on the planet should be astounding: if a dog barks in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does the dog still bark? We answer yes. It means that independent of your valuation of life, that life exists and is very real; that life is a valid moral agent. It is not anthropomorphic to suggest that all life shares some kind of perception, and inner driving force; the internal process that goes on inside of you, also exists in that other life. It exists in all life as a universal.

We seem to forget all too often that things exist independently of us. We can only see the world from one perspective, and it is understandable that we cannot see it from all angles and create a total theory of how it works. However, to 'imagine' a universal code of ethics we do not need anything other than our one perspective. It is the work of our powerful minds, not the work of some natural principle, that can lift human beings above nature, and allow us to view the world from a loftier perspective.

The rational mind - which our western tradition has separated from nature for better or worse - can work out how to change this world, but it cannot tell us why we ought to in the first place. For the why, we have feeling. We have the principle of pain and pleasure; to avoid one and to seek the other. With this principle, we can infer that others are capable of feeling some kind of physical pleasure or pain, joy or anguish. Even if those feelings are different to ours in degree, they are not different in kind - a jellyfish may experience pain in a way different to you, but nonetheless it is still some kind of pain. (Whether it is possible for scientific research to contradict this is unknown to me at this point. However, the appeal of a universal driving force within all living entities seems more intuitive). Even if a creature is incapable of emotional suffering (whatever that means), it's actual body can still be hurt.

Weighing it up -

The question remains as to how much we value pleasure and pain, and how much more we consider human beings over other entities. I do believe we should consider human beings as most valuable (perhaps due to nothing more than a species bias). This 'humans first' attitude does not give us the right to do as we please. Whilst human suffering should be averted over animal suffering, human pleasure should not be placed above animal suffering. In effect, I do not feel that one 'unit' of human pleasure is worth causing one 'unit' of animal pain, and we can therefore only accept pleasure provided it causes no, or minimal, pain.

Which immediately leads to the following question. What is this grounded in?

You might be asking how an entity being able to perceive gives it the right to live. It doesn't. It just means that it's existence is as real as yours, even though it exists differently to you. However, just because something does not have a magically-generated, "god given" right to live free from pain, nor then do you have the right to inflict it, unless you have a good reason to.

Both of these 'rights' are based on mischief - the right to live is just random sentiment, based on nothing more than ones own displeasure at suffering. But equally the right to kill something is based on being able to kill it, and enacting upon that urge; effectively, it is the right of the intelligent and strong to overcome a weaker adversary. This is nothing if not the basest and lowest means to determine who should have what in life. It is an appeal to force, and humanity should be long past such a poor weighing up of the value by this stage in our evolution.

The safest bet in this instance must be to assume that nothing has rights to protect it, yet no one has rights to harm it, outside of necessity. Which means we are agnostics, and can but leave it alone. Except to avert catastrophe, or harm to humans, and to study it, I do not believe nature should be interfered with, nor romanticised. It is a complex system, and it may well be beyond our reach altogether.

Animals in our societies -

To my mind, once we come to the conclusion that personifying nature is a distortion of reality, we lose the notion that nature is specifically designed for us, and we become more cautious about tampering with nature, and we change the way we perceive animals in nature, and we then lose the 'right' to harm animals in our own societies. This is because we are no longer a part of nature, and it is in fact we who shape nature with our minds, and then profess to learn from it! As such, any appeals to nature are null and void. Whatever 'natural laws' may or may not exist out there are irrelevant to our profoundly unnatural species.

Worse than our treatment of animals outside of our societies are those distorted by romantic sentiments and comfortable lies - those creatures directly under our control. By anthropomorphizing 'culturally relevant' animals as happy dairy cows, as jolly sheep, as singing and dancing hens, we are hiding the truth behind industries that are a blight on our ethical record. Iron shackles, killings gone wrong, a world without sunlight, warehouses full of blood and shit and suffering; this is the price people are willing to pay for their pleasures.

To see the scale of this reality requires a clear and rational mind, to understand the full ethical implications of our cultural practices and our personal choices. It then requires an emotional commitment to wish no-harm upon creatures quite radically different from us, but nonetheless sharing one of the universal principles of all life; to avoid suffering.

We must first dispel the myths, and confine the romance of anthropomorphism to where it belongs. Such romantic perceptions are the most innocent form of tyranny, but they allow mass-violence to triumph, and drain reality of its urgency, trivializing the massive, unnecessary suffering we cause on a daily basis.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Anthropomorphism and Nature

The vast and wonderful Greek word in the title is a combination of 'anthropo' meaning human, and 'morphe' or shape. Anthropomorphizing something is to give it human attributes or appearances. For instance, if I was to say that the volcano had something like Elise's temper when it erupted last week, I would be giving this natural phenomena an emotional motive; the fury of Elise. The biggest 'culprits' for this kind of thing can be found in the creatives who dreamed-up their gods, who often just so happened to be shaped like attractive people or cool animal-human hybrids in so many different mythos and religions.

Though I can only speak for the modern mind, I think the following motive explains why anthropomorphism still exists. It comes down to a deep wish that nature was designed for us, filled with hidden meaning for us to discover. This gives nature a mystique, or an extra layer of meaning. As we can never reach or understand this mystique, we never have to see reality in all of it's coldness.

Anthropomorphism makes nature seem like a created order to be enjoyed by us, and used by us. This is problematic because this idea of 'created for' does not imply a sense of the permanent flux we exist in. If something is designed, it implies permanence. If the order of nature is therefore permanent and 'for us', then those who reflect these 'natural values' are of a similar unchanging and entitled mindset. The greatest example of this indirect anthropomorphism can be found in fundamentalist religion's argument from design. It is just ever so slightly silly that Man has created a creator God, and then had Him create nature for Man!

In reality Man is recreating nature in his own image. We have always looked to nature for the correct way to live, or appealed to the word 'natural' as a justifier: the Cynics of ancient Greece spoke of living the way of nature, venerating the loyalty and resourcefulness of the dog; the Taoist sage was said to live the way of nature in a more easy-going sense;

Social 'Darwinists' pick and choose the violent aspects of (our) nature to justify all sorts of capitalist nonsense. Yet now, with the fall of religious belief for so many of us, believing in mother nature is more appealing than it ever has been. As a result, we still anthropomorphize nature, to give it a shape we can identify with. Then we profess to learn from it, taking from it what was never there in the first place.

We also have to quite cynically remember that crafting something into a human shape means it has no value outside of us. If it did have value, why would we need to craft it into human shape in the first place? Why couldn't we stretch our minds to accept or scrutinise something as it actually is, or just feel what is there without the intrusion of prejudice? Anthropomorphism makes things 'human', and of course, only that which reflects humanity can have value. This is nowhere more obvious than the word 'humanity' being used as a positive term: 'Put some flowers up and give the place some humanity' or 'That cow is being treated in an inhumane fashion'. We may use these terms innocently, but their meaning is clear enough. It is the simplest form of prejudice, only reacting positively to something which is similar to yourself. I am not saying that we should be ashamed of our humanity, far from it! Only that we do not need to consider something human, or 'humanized' for it to possess value. This makes any scientific or psychological examination of animals for behaviours similar to us unnecessary for us to consider those animals as valuable. To summarize: animals and plants and natural phenomena do not need to be humanized for us to consider them.

What is there by nature?

I do not know what the actual 'values' in nature are, I must admit it. It seems like a bit of a jungle where animals attract, repel, cooperate, compete, fight, fuck and feed (all-in-one where the praying mantis is concerned). But whatever those 'values', if they exist at all, they do not change with our re-valuation of them. They exist beyond us. We cannot transplant our values upon nature. Even the animals we take into our direct concern, or enslave for use in our archaic industries, are apart from us in that we can never communicate with them in the same way as we can another human being. 

This is not to say that we share nothing with the animal - we do. Animal kinship is extremely important and enriching. It is sharing with an animal something deeply internal in ourselves. We have similar components, and can recognise one another as alive – the most profound recognition possible. A cat for instance can feel a sense of attachment, and so can we. A large spider can recognise you as a threat and duel with you, feeling something similar to you. We 'risen primates' have evolved out of nature after all. The problem is we have also diverged greatly from all other animal life, such that outside of instinct and an understanding of physical pain / pleasure principles, we share nothing with the animal. If we assume that Mr.Cat can 'human love' us back, we are wrong. A cat can only 'cat love', and nothing will alter this fact.

Another problem with anthropomorphism is that it is greatly prejudiced. As children we were all forced to endure humanoid turtles attending to various banal adventures, and we are all familiar with the ubiquitous teddy bear wearing some kind of human pyjamas. But where were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Nematodes? Is the microscopic worm not also worthy of care and consideration - it is after all the main prey of flesh-eating fungi. What about the passion and grief of the sea sponge? It is only recently that we have come close to appreciate such a creature in our artistic output. Anthropomorphism does not give us any universal principle with which we can create a system of ethics. It is only the large-eyed fawn, and the cuddly kitty, and the awe-inspiring bird, and so forth, who we wish to accept into our bosom as being worthy of consideration. Even then we often 'misinterpret' an animal's attributes, and create a false view of it.

The symbolism of animal and plant has soaked itself into our culture. Birds and predators make great mascots or patriotic symbols, representing the values of a nation in all its glory (presumably the lion for its pride and the unicorn for its stiff-upper lip in the case of Britons!) This is the same kind of pick-and-choose attitude toward nature that limits our understanding of it. Whilst it may be artistically and visually impressive, it does not bode well for our minds, or our environmentalists. We need to take nature seriously, and to do this, we need to take a step back from our human prejudices. Besides, which will be the first nation to sport an armadillo in it's colours; is her stern shell and defiant heart not also worthy of patriotic grandeur?

Our strange duality toward animals can be summed up in a single image; the impressive head of a stag upon the wall of a hunter's cabin. Simultaneously the animal is admired, and yet was killed for no real reason at all. A DVD copy of 'Bambi' lies under its lifeless eyes. The hunter's children love animals. Apparently.

As for the animal ethics which may arise in our societies once when we de-anthropomorphize nature, I will save that for my next article on this topic. To summarize: it will concern the way our attitudes change toward plants and animals once we stop seeing them purely in relation to how useful they are to us, but what they are worth in and of themselves.

Selim 'Selim' Talat (the vegetarian anti-anthropomorphism advocate who nevertheless loves the owls and kitties in the Phil Tak newsletter!)

At its most fundamental level, what is power?

If we move outside of our human world, what occurs in the cosmos? An asteroid, hurtling through space toward another, collides with it. The body with the greater mass and greater speed will be damaged in the impact, but it will exert more of an 'influence' on the other body. The very large and dense bodies, the stars, hold the smaller bodies, planets and their moons, in their gravitational pull. Effectively, looking at the cosmos we can guess at a motive, but ultimately it looks like a whole lot of cause and effect. With the cosmos being inanimate and incapable of perception, we cannot say there are any power relations at all, but just an unfolding of various movements and collisions and such.

Now have I just wasted a hundred words or so of article space, or has this helped to put things into some kind of perspective? Are we any different from naturally occurring bodies, bashing into each other with no real discernible motive? I think so. Yet before we get onto humanity, lets bring it closer to home; the animal kingdom. Some people may turn to the wild world of animals as some kind of indicator of our own power-situation. There is a lot of killing and chasing and worry outside the walls of civilization. Predators use whatever means they have at their disposal (i.e. their bodies and hunting skills) to catch prey, so that they may devour that prey and sustain their own bodies at the slain creatures expense. The prey on the other hand is going to do everything it can to escape. If we may generalize, it is a constant battle for survival, where hunger is an ever-present threat.

So, power in relation to human beings; what is it!

Power in the human sphere is more complex than the clashing of forces, or the 'violent/benevolent' survival cycle of nature. There are two great categories of power we must take into consideration in regards to humanity. These are materials/technology and identity.

Firstly, how powerful a group of humans are depends on how materially rich they are. With a greater potential to move matter, to disrupt matter and to enrich matter, a group of humans can maintain itself to a better degree than another group of humans, and can use its material superiority to destroy any perceived threats to it. Yet perhaps more fundamental to this material power is the notion of identity; namely, group identity. Without the ability to cooperate with, or bully, fellow humans in the same group, power quite simply cannot reach the magnitude it now occupies; group identity is the only way societies can form and function on such a huge scale. The identity people gain from belonging to a group, be it a nation, or a culture, or a religion, or anything, is the means used to win that persons loyalty and ensure they will act according to how the ruler-ship decides. These groups are held together, above all else, by a common language. Language therefore, is the prerequisite to a developed identity, and thus to power.

  

The actual human body

Language and technology determines how we react to biology. For instance, woman's lot has for most of human history been decided for her, either by the raw facts of her being the reproducer of human kind, or male dominance reducing her role in society to that of a second-class citizen. It is only recently, with more (but by no means total) recognition of woman's potential, and the material means to ensure reproduction is not too much of a burden, that women can move toward liberation from patriarchal servitude and be allowed to flourish on the world stage as man's equal. Thus, we cannot attribute group-identity to biology alone, but must look at the whole situation to determine how much power a group-identity is capable of obtaining.

We are not, however, completely free from biology, nor are we completely removed from the bounds of nature. Our bodies for the most part of our time on earth were geared toward a life of scant survival. Now we live in an age of abundance, yet our bodies have not had time to catch up. We have an instinctual, infinite hunger for everything that ever has been or ever will be, and nothing can satiate us. This biological lust for everything lurks within us all.

The individual

Whether I like it or not, I belong to the group 'human'. We could dance around all day searching for a definition of the word, but generally speaking we can recognise a human being from a stone, a camel or a lamp-post (or a lamp-post shaped like a camel). In addition to human, I belong to the group male, olive-skinned, attractive/cute, English-speaking, 'P' political group, 'Q' religious group, 'R' economic class, belonging to 'X' family, and so forth. All of these factors play on my abilities to function in society. We could potentially view all human beings as individuals, with their own source of power and their own unique possibilities, but how often do we see a person and how often do we see the metaphorical masks they wear, or are forced upon them?

     
That is not to say that individual power does not play some role. There are always geniuses emerging who defy all of the rules. For the rest of us individuals, we do have personal power structures and we can be strong or weak, we can make good or bad decisions. Like all highly evolved mammals, we have a sense of self and we can reflect and decide on what to do. Yet ultimately our success or failure is not entirely in our own hands; our power to act is hampered or aided by our belonging to this group or that group. This means that the ultimate choices we can make as individuals to exert our power on the world, require us first to find a similar group and forge an identity within it: A thinking individual within a mutually friendly group.

    
Those of great individual strength wish to make everyone fight on their terms; 'I'm a powerful individual, why can't you be too?'. In reality, the power of the individual is propped up by a collective identity, whether they care to acknowledge it or not. Just as a fish does not see water, the privileged does not see his privilege; he cannot see that much of his power comes from outside of himself.

An opinionated answer

So, what is power in relation to humanity? Power is economic, social, sexual, physical, personal. Power is the ability to project ones interests out of the mind and onto the world, to make people and matter move. But it is not just an unfolding random force, nor a drive for pure survival, it is couched in our sentient ability to use language and build group identities and create machines of abundance and destruction. Our use of power depends on great projects; goals and dreams and plans and visions - everyone who uses power does so for an end they think is worthwhile. The infinite lust for power may be informed by our biological drives, but how we react to and deal with this biology is determined by us.

Looking at the world today, the ultimate form of power manifests itself in dominant forces getting other people outside of their immediate interest group to destroy themselves for the dominators benefit. Nowhere has this been more historically demonstrated than in woman, who for most of history has failed to recognise herself.  Sadly, we have not yet found a way to prevent this almost universally occurring form of self-destructive behaviour. We certainly won't find it through moralizing, or meekness: No individual, or group has ever surrendered its power willingly. It is only through fighting that power can be taken and shared amongst all power groups, such that they may shape the world around them into a mutually agreeable place.

Selim 'Selim' Talat