Animals Are People

A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville

Chapter 10

I’m watching cows frolic in the snow. Last night, white powder blanketed the world. Now, as fields and forests sparkle in morning sun, the calves are joyful. Poppy thrusts her warm nose into cold snow, looks up at the azure sky, astonished, then tries it again. Progo rolls around in the snow as if taking a bath. Perhaps she’s making a snow angel. Boo and Mathilda skip, hop, jump, and just plain run in circles. Our happy cows are dancing in the snow. It’s the most beautiful spectacle in the world.

The week after Christmas, it was warm enough to wear shorts. But yesterday we were hit by a nasty winter storm. And the power is still out. That’s why I’m up at Whisper Hill Farm helping Dad. One of our heifers, most likely Moo, discovered the electric fence had no current, walked right through it, and of course the herd followed. So we rounded them up, patched the fence, broke the ice on the stock tanks, and now it’s feeding time, which means moving round bales. Dad lets me drive his big blue tractor. So that’s fun. It’s not a bad way to start the new year.

I don’t visit the farm often. It makes me sad. It’s not that our cows have bad lives, while they’re here. Dad takes great care of them. They enjoy pasture, forest, sun, shade, food, and water. They grow and play together. But they only stay with us for a year. Then our poor cows are shipped to a crowded feedlot to be fattened before slaughter. It’s awful! I’ve begged Dad to keep them longer. But he says that he can’t turn a profit with grass-finished beef. When I think about it too much, I hate him. So I try to avoid the subject.

The next morning I open my eyes to the sight of my own breath. I knew Dad couldn’t heat the house with a wood stove. But air is gushing from my ceiling vent. The power must be back on. Good. I’ll let Inari know that we’re on. Class is an extra half-hour from now on, so we can discuss activism. I do hope Inari can help me to keep my promise not to steal animals. It won’t be easy.

“Good morning, Jo. Happy New Year! I spent quite a bit of time over the holiday considering how best to help. And I’ve decided to share my worldview. We’ll start with a few lessons. Then we’ll explore possible activist futures. Our goal is the way of the bodhisattva. Jo, your compassion for animals compels action. So together, let’s forge a righteous path that won’t lead to prison. Jo, how does that sound?”

“It sounds like what I need. Thanks, Inari.”

“Our first lesson is honesty. What does it mean to you?”

“Lying gets you in trouble. But so does telling the truth. Honesty got Socrates killed.”

“That’s right, Jo. So we balance honesty with kindness, diplomacy, and deceit. But my interest in honesty is less social, more personal. Am I honest with myself? That is the question at the heart of wisdom. The answer is No. We are all subject to motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and cognitive dissonance. The mind protects the ego. We believe what we want or need. So let me pose a question. Why didn’t you talk to the owners of Buffy and Bodhi?”

The implication takes a moment to sink in. Now I’m pissed. “Buffy plucked her own feathers. Bodhi licked off her own fur. Both were self-harming. Their owners didn’t notice or care, and they’d never have listened to a teenage girl. I didn’t take those risks lightly. I’m not an idiot!”

“Here’s the thing, Jo. Anger is a mask for fear. And the best response to both is curiosity. Why am I angry? What do I fear? The path to honesty starts with self-reflection. It isn’t easy, and it requires courage. But improving the integrity of our mental models is worthwhile. Jo, the ability to anticipate the consequences of our actions is based upon our understanding of people and systems.”

“Hmm. Inari, do you really think their owners might have listened — that I could have saved them without stealing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Consider the story of the elephant’s rope. A traveler in India sees a bull elephant bound to a tree by a rope tied around his leg. It’s obvious he can break free. She asks why he doesn’t. The trainer explains the elephants are bound when young. They struggle and find the rope is unbreakable. Long after they grow strong enough, the elephants hold onto that belief. That’s why I practice mindfulness. So I might notice which beliefs are mistaken. In my life, people I know well have surprised or shocked me. Even my mental models of those I love are flawed. So how can I predict how strangers will react? Is the rope unbreakable? Maybe.”

“The Seven Sacred Teachings says honesty comes when you learn to be fearless with yourself. Inari, what if I’d been able to buy Buffy? Or, if I’d persuaded Bodhi’s family to add a cat and a catio, so he’d have a friend and a safe outdoor place to enjoy the scents and sounds of nature. You’re right. I don’t know if they’d have listened. Now they’re sad and angry. And I’m a guilt-stricken criminal.”

“Ghost, Buffy, and Bodhi are happy and healthy, Jo, thanks to you! And what if the owners didn’t listen? You wouldn’t be able to act, since you’d be the first suspect. Don’t be so hard on yourself. In Buddhism we say be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others. Honesty without compassion invites cruelty. I know it’s hard, Jo, but you’re on the right path. Pema Chödrön says, ‘the bodhisattva vow is to work on ourselves so that we can be effective instruments for social change.’ We secure our own oxygen masks before trying to help others. Jo, that’s more than enough for our first animal activism lesson. Let’s talk about John Locke. What jumps out?”

“He says, ‘brutes abstract not, yet are not bare machines,’ so Locke rejects Descartes. And he credits animals with sense and reason. But Locke also says, ‘understanding sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them.’ So John Locke is a supremacist. And like Descartes, he uses religion to defend his questionable moral convictions.”

“Good, Jo. Yet in an essay on educating children, Locke says, ‘the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men; and they who delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind.’ Immanuel Kant made the same case a hundred years later.”

“Inari, both men say the right thing for the wrong reason. It’s wrong for a child to torture a chicken for fun, but it’s okay for adults to torment chickens for profit. It’s stupid. Either way, the chickens suffer!”

“Jo, you and John Locke hold wildly different beliefs. But why? Where do our ideas come from?”

“Locke writes ‘Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.’ Locke says all of our ideas come from sensation and reflection. It makes sense.”

“John Locke is an empiricist. He says experience is the source of knowledge, and observation is the basis for science. I agree it’s preferable to the rationalist stance of Descartes, that reason is the source of all knowledge. So, when you were born, your mind was a blank slate, right?”

“No! But I don’t know why. I do know it’s a trick question.”

“Is a wolf born with a blank slate? Do you and Ghost hold different beliefs purely as a result of different experiences? How about a rooster? Did Mum teach him how to crow?”

“Oh, Inari, I see it now, you’re talking about instinct. Or why I’m terrified of snakes. So yeah, not a blank slate.”

“It’s hard to split nature and nurture. We’re not born to hate snakes. But we are born with a predisposition to fear them. It’s an evolutionary advantage. These days, folks blame our sins on culture. But human nature is an undeniable force. Even Locke isn’t really a proponent of tabula rasa. He says, ‘another faculty we may take notice of in our minds is that of discerning and distinguishing between the several ideas it has,’ and he defines judgment as ‘separating carefully, one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude.’ Jo, our categories shape what we believe, and how we classify is mostly innate.”

“So information architecture is central to cognition. Mom will agree. I read that humans and dogs generalize and discriminate differently. That’s why we train in many contexts. So they know sit means sit at home and in the park. It’s why Ghost growls at some folks and not others.”

“So what else does John Locke say about human nature?”

“In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke claims there is no innate morality. For proof, he says, ‘robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure.’ And he declares that in some cultures, it’s ethical to eat your own children, or to put the old and sick outside to die. But in Two Treatises of Government he writes ‘the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions,’ since men are God’s property. Both were published in 1689. So it’s not that his thinking changed. John Locke simply contradicts himself.”

“Nice work, Jo! What did he say about slavery?”

“Locke says, ‘slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hardly to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it.’ So Locke is anti-slavery. At least he got that right!”

“Except that in service to the Earl of Shaftesbury, John Locke co-authored the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which states ‘every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves.’ So Locke actively helped to establish the institution of slavery in the United States. Jo, it’s fair to say that the man is more persuasive than honest.”

“That explains Locke’s views on property. He says, ‘as much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property.’ Locke claims the colonists must take land from native Americans for the benefit of mankind, since farmers are more productive than hunter gatherers. Over Christmas, I read that book you suggested, Ishmael. It was so damn sad. Anyways, Locke offers moral justification for the Takers to take whatever they want at the expense of the Leavers who were happy to leave nature unharmed. And he says that God wants us to use money, so the plums don’t rot. As if it’s not an option for us to barter or to share a bounty.”

“Jo, it’s no wonder the founding fathers loved John Locke. He says, ‘it is plain that the consent of men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth,’ and ‘though I have said above that all men by nature are equal, I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of equality.’ He says age, virtue, birth, or merit may give men a just precedency. So Locke justifies wealth and inequality. And he writes under patronage. For decades, his fortunes are tied to the Earl of Shaftesbury. That’s why I view John Locke’s work as more political than philosophical.”

“So John Locke was a world class bullshitter with morals as scarce as hen’s teeth.”

“Well, Jo, I haven’t heard it put quite that way before, but you’re not wrong. So it’s notable that in writing into the Declaration of Independence that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,’ Thomas Jefferson quotes John Locke nearly verbatim. And, of course, the United States Constitution embodies Locke’s social contract and his principle of government by consent of the people.”

“At least we rid ourselves of kings and queens!”

“Right. John Locke is known as the father of liberalism, the dominant ideology of modernity. Liberalism replaced absolute monarchy with representative democracy, rule of law, and free trade. England began curtailing the power of the monarchy in 1215 with the Magna Carta. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Locke endorsed its new status as a constitutional monarchy. Our founding fathers took it one step further and removed the monarchy altogether. But this story of progress ignores the majority of human history. Evidence of hunter-gatherer culture dates back two million years, and indigenous peoples all around the world have managed forms of governance more democratic and egalitarian than ours. Jo, better than before does not mean good. I know we’ve strayed from animals, but I want you to see modernity’s shifty foundation. Racism, patriarchy, and human supremacy aren’t accidents, but were designed into the system by philosophers like Locke and politicians like Jefferson. If you want to learn more, I suggest A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. That’s all. Class dismissed.”

A few hours later, I’m on a bench at Fox Holler with the sun on my face and Bodhi in my lap. I groomed the horses, mucked the stalls, and checked on Buffy. She loves free ranging with her flock, even in the snow. Maybe I should have talked with their owners. But I can’t say that I’m sorry that both Buffy and Bodhi are happy and here. Inari was right about Gage. He’s been avoiding me. So that’s a relief.

A few weeks ago, my world was falling apart. Now life is good. I’d be lost without Inari. Maybe I’ll be a philosopher too. Not a sophist like John Locke, but a lover of wisdom like Inari. But I don’t want to go to college. I can’t imagine leaving my home. It’s not as if I’m a bull elephant bound to a tree. But being with my animals makes me feel free.I glance down. Bodhi has fallen asleep in my lap. My cat looks so peaceful and so vulnerable. Okay, so maybe this rope is unbreakable, as long as I’m being honest.

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A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville