Animals Are People

A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville

Chapter 12

I’m in bed reading Kinship With All Life, and I’m hangry. It’s dinner time, but we’re waiting for Dad. I was so excited to read this book. It’s about animal communication. J. Allen Boone wrote it in 1954, and it’s still a bestseller. I hoped it would validate my visions. But it had the opposite effect. Boone claims telepathy with ants and flies. And he says cobras and mambas never bit Grace Wiley, because she silently praised the snakes for their good qualities. He fails to confess that Wiley famously died of a snakebite at 65. Boone is a fraud. How can anyone believe his bullshit?

Mom calls me to dinner, at last. The eggplant risotto smells delicious. Her consulting project ended a few weeks back, so she’s had time to cook. I tear a hunk of baguette, slather on vegan butter, and gobble it down.

“Sorry I’m late,” says Dad, slumping into his chair, rather dramatically. “My tractor broke, so I had to move the bales by hand. The part that I need costs an arm and a leg, and nobody can say how damn long it’ll take to ship it from China. I worry we’ll never recover from the pandemic.”

Both Mom and Dad have been down lately. So after a couple heaping forkfuls of risotto, I try to cheer them up with a true-false. “Today I opened the barn door and nearly stepped on a skunk, or today I found our goats on the neighbor’s front porch, or today I heard Louise crowing like a rooster.” Dad guesses the goats. Mom says Louise.

“Nope, you’re both wrong. No skunk!”

“I’ve heard of hens crowing,” says Dad. “Never seen it though. Jo, tell us about your crazy goats.”

“I was doing math, when I heard Ghost barking at the front door. As best I can tell, gunshots freaked her out, and she tore the gate open. Of course, the goats and chickens escaped too. Eva peed on Junior’s couch. And they pooped all over his porch. So I had to do some cleanup.”

Mom and Dad think it’s hilarious. They laugh, and their smiles light up the dining room. Mission accomplished!

The next day, Inari starts our class with a smile and a wave. “Good morning, Jo! How are you?”

“I’m fine. Are you okay, Inari? Your voice sounds weird.”

“I’m not sure. Yesterday a friend said I sounded day-drunk. I feel tired. Maybe that’s it. But I’ll see a doctor next week, so no worries! Jo, I’m excited to explain gentle change. But context first. Let’s start with the Serenity Prayer.”

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.

“Jo, it’s that last bit where I get stuck. I’m in thrall to the elusiveness of the wisdom to know the difference.”

“I guess it’s not just me who has a way with words. Inari, that’s lovely. Anyway, I agree wisdom is elusive. You talked about the Zen farmer last week. Then a fox killed Buffy. I tried to save her. Now she’s dead. Maybe we shouldn’t even change the things we can. Life is confusing!”

“Oh, Jo, I’m so sorry that you lost Buffy. It’s not wrong to try to do good. But guarantees aren’t in stock. All we can do is our best. That’s the moral of the starfish story.

One day, an old man, walking along a beach littered with starfish, washed ashore by a storm, came upon a young girl throwing them back into the ocean, one by one. Puzzled, the old man asked what she was doing. The girl answered, “I’m saving these starfish.” The old man chuckled. “Girl, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you possibly make?” The girl smiled, picked up a starfish, gently tossed her into the sea, and said, “I made a difference to that one!”

“I’ve heard it before. It’s what I’ve done with Ghost, Buffy, and Bodhi. They are my starfish. But the old man’s right. There are too many starfish. What difference can I make?”

“Jo, everything matters, or nothing matters. In my book, that’s the bottom line. Each starfish, human, bat, cat, rat, pig, and spider weaves a web of consciousness. Everyone matters, or nobody matters. That’s why change starts with self: secure your own oxygen mask before helping others. I am enough, and I can do more. The part before the comma is a feeling that matters, or nothing matters.”

“I often don’t feel that I’m enough. But I do hear you. Inari, what about the part after the comma?”

“One starfish at a time. Jo, that’s the place to start. We help brothers, sisters, parents, children, friends, strangers. We love our cats, dogs, chickens, and goats. We do our best. We do what we can.”

“But, Inari, what if we need to do more?”

“In the words of Archimedes, ‘Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.’ So we look for the levers. But we do so with honesty and humility. The odds are against us. The scale of suffering is vast. And, as Gandhi says, there is ‘the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree.’ The path matters as much as the goal. What we do changes who we become.”

“That’s why I feel bad about Bodhi. The end of helping was right, but the means of theft was wrong. I left his owners feeling sad, confused, and violated. I can only imagine how lost that little girl must feel. That’s not who I want to be!”

“I know. I really do. We all make mistakes. We all deserve compassion. I love you, Jo. That’s why I want you to understand my theory of gentle change. I don’t wish for you to suffer or to cause suffering. The key to gentle change is to commit to being gentle with yourself and others. Then, and only then, do we look for the levers of information, action, experience, and environment.”

“So tell me about the levers already.”

“The obvious lever is information. Language and classification are tools of persuasion. We aim to change minds with art, science, philosophy, advertising, and politics. We make movies, give speeches, write books. But in the modern era of information overload, attention is scarce, and resistance is high. Information is our addiction. Despite adverse consequences, we keep using.”

“Yeah. I used information to convince my parents to be vegan. It didn’t work. I mean, we eat vegan dinner. So that’s good. But then Dad sneaks a bacon sandwich as his evening snack.”

“The next lever is action. We change the things we can, score quick wins, and lead by example. When we act by taking that very first step, the distance is small, yet the triumph feels big. We act to build momentum.”

“But our actions must be gentle, right? We can’t just break into homes and steal animals.”

“Exactly! Most knee-jerk reactions are counterproductive. They feel good in the moment. But they end in regret. Jo, we must be mindful of what Brian Eno calls ‘the big here and the long now.’ In making a splash, we are responsible for the ripples. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says, ‘yoga is skill in action.’ It’s not easy. People spend their whole lives engaged in and challenged by the practice.”

“So I should add the Bhagavad Gita to my reading list?”

“Absolutely! It’s a splendid poem and an ancient source of wisdom on acting with courage and without attachment to outcome. And, Jo, you’ll enjoy its probity. Krishna says, ‘wise men regard all beings as equal: a learned priest, a cow, an elephant, a rat, or a filthy, rat-eating outcaste.’”

“Ha! Krishna sounds like my kind of Lord.”

“‘I am Death, shatterer of worlds, annihilating all things.’ Yes, Jo, Lord Krishna suits you.” Inari smiles. “Now back to gentle change. Three is experience. Show, don’t tell. Feel, don’t think. Images and words hold power, but often we must learn by doing. Can you think of an example?”

“Sure. When they first met, Mom was terrified of Ghost. There was nothing I could say to alter her belief that wolves are monsters. Until Ghost licked away her fears and snuggled into Mom’s heart. It’s the same with my visions. I always loved animals. And yet, to experience what it’s like to be a bored goat, or a lonely cat, or a mother owl — well, it’s transformative. Inari, I can never un-feel what I felt.”

“Well said. Now, the most powerful lever, and the least obvious, is environment. ‘We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us’ is Churchill’s turn of phrase. But how do they shape us? We don’t know, since the nudging is imperceptible. Our actions and beliefs are invisibly influenced by our location and surroundings. We follow the paths of least resistance. We do what comes easy.”

“When Mom worked in downtown Ann Arbor, she said it’s best to separate life and work. Now she works at home, she says it’s best to be with family. And we used to eat out all the time. But now we’re in the sticks, we all learned to cook. Environment changed our family, for sure!”

“To change belief and behavior, change the environment. We’re shaped by the laws, institutions, arts, habits, and belongings of those around us. Stewart Brand named the pace layers of society, from slow to fast — nature, culture, governance, infrastructure, commerce, and fashion. The faster layers get all the attention. The slower layers hold all the power. To shift the environment lever is difficult. But, Jo, it’s the best way to effect lasting change.”

“This all sounds too hard. You’re giving me a headache!”

“Oh, the irony! The goal of my conceptual framework for gentle change is freebeing. Jo, as you engage in animal activism, in the face of an awful status quo, against all odds, I want you to be free to think, feel, and act. Now, let’s switch gears. Tell me about Mary Wollstonecraft.”

“Inari, I feel like a total idiot for calling Rousseau one of the good ones. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Wollstonecraft rips him a new one, and rightfully so. In Emile, he says, ‘if woman is made to please and to be subjugated to man, she ought to make herself pleasing to him rather than to provoke him,’ and he says women can’t be free, since they are incapable of abstract reasoning.”

“Rousseau is sexist. But so is Wollstonecraft. She concedes inferiority, noting men are stronger and more virtuous. Of women, she says, ‘Confined then in cages, like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock-majesty from perch to perch. It is true, they are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin; but health, liberty, and virtue are given in exchange.’ Her claim is not that women are equal to men, but that women can be improved by education. Afraid to overstep, she says, ‘Don’t think that I want to invert the order of things.’ Still, she deserves to be known as a founding feminist philosopher. Bold enough to speak truth to patriarchy, Mary Wollstonecraft lit the spark that became the flame of feminism.”

“Mary Wollstonecraft says, ‘If women are really capable of acting like rational creatures, let them not be treated like slaves, or like lower animals.’ Inari, there’s something about that line that really sticks in my craw.”

“Jo, I expect that you’ll appreciate this famous quote by Audre Lorde, a self-described black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet.”

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

“Wow! So Mary Wollstonecraft is using the master’s tools by endorsing hierarchy?”

“Yes. As Lorde says, ‘there is no hierarchy of oppressions.’ We must choose equality or hierarchy. Might makes right is the status quo. Mary is a prisoner in the master’s house. She uses his tools and behaves submissively to avoid incurring his wrath. Jo, how does that work out?”

“Thomas Taylor writes A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes to humiliate Mary. He says if women deserve rights, why not animals, vegetables, and minerals too? He claims that once we understand the language of brutes and restore their natural equality with mankind, ‘we may expect to see physicians equal to the most illustrious among men, in the persons of bears, dragons and weasels.’ It’s parody. He’s being demeaning to Wollstonecraft, women, and animals.”

“Yes. And I doubt Mary was surprised. In her Vindication, she writes, ‘This habitual cruelty is first caught, like catching a disease, at school, where the boys have great sport tormenting the miserable animals that they come across. As they grow up they easily shift from barbarity towards animals to domestic tyranny over wives, children, and servants.’ It’s worth noting that her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley grew up to write Frankenstein, a novel in which the man is a monster, and the creature is a hideous, sad, peaceful vegetarian who longs for love.”

“It’s odd. Inari, I know that the creature is nameless. But I can’t help but think of the creature as Frankenstein.”

“There’s power in naming and not naming. Shelley knew that. Words cast spells. Categories are enchantments. Jo, think about the levers of gentle change: information, action, experience, and environment. The categories are useful. But all maps are traps. Never consent to a hierarchy before asking what it hides. To that end, I do hope you’ll give my theory of gentle change some thought. It may change how you change. Alright, good work today, ta-ta.”

The moment class ends, I’m hit by a wave of exhaustion. Buffy is dead. And it’s my fault. And twenty miles away, the university tortures monkeys. How can I do nothing? Inari means well. But gentle change is debilitating. The only lever I need to save those monkeys is a crowbar.

I leash Ghost, and we run. Sunlight dances on the ice beside our red dirt road. On a whim, we veer into the hunting preserve that sits across from our farm. We skirt the No Trespass sign and the chain that blocks vehicle access. I’ve never dared enter. This is the realm of men in pickups with dogs and guns on the trail of birds and bucks.

I’ve seen pheasants escape into our land. Golden plumage with iridescent reds, greens, blues, and purples: a pheasant is a flying rainbow that hunters blast from the sky with tiny lead pellets. But today the blood-soaked land is silent.

I unleash Ghost, and we run. Where the dirt road ends, a path begins. Greenbrier thorns tear at my arms and legs. It feels good to turn my pain inside-out. I run faster. I am a rainbow pheasant flying down the hill. I am a freebeing.

I am Death, shatterer of worlds, annihilating all things.

All of a sudden, I meet the abyss. It’s in the guise of a raging river. Anyways, I am barely able to stop in time.

I sit on a boulder above a stream that’s bursting with snowmelt runoff. It takes a while to catch my breath. As the sun warms my back, Ghost licks the blood from my legs. It’s gross, but cleaning wounds is her love language.

I am lost in the forbidden forest, and I want to sleep. As Robert Frost puts it, “the woods are lovely, dark, and deep.”My sweat cools. I shiver. Time to go home. It’s a long walk uphill. It’s alright. I feel myself again. I don’t know how, but I will find a way to help animals. I feel it in my bones.

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A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville