Animals Are People

A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville

Chapter 16

On a beauteous evening we stand tall, calm and free. Our maple, oak, and hickory forest is strong. The sap rises. And our leaves breathe deep. In this time of abundance, I am able to share food, not only with our beloved sisters and children, but also with the shrubs and grasses who will support our seedlings — for we agree this is to be a mast year. Even now, amidst the leafing, our dear babies grow.

A nuthatch alights on a branch, and I recall the aphids. There was an attack on my sister a few weeks back, nothing serious. Our leaves are now rich in tannins, and unbothered. My memory is a deep well. After three hundred and fifty-one winters, I am the oldest. I have endured droughts and storms. And I survived the clearing. So much loss to make a hay field. Our sadness never fades.

As sun melts into hills, we savor her warmth and relax our branches. A chorus of howls makes night official. The coyotes are awake. A while later, I’m enchanted by the deep, soft hoot of an owl. In the time before the road, the song of the forest was lush. We whispered, warbled, buzzed, yipped, and yawped with all creatures great and small. The world is different now, and yet the communal symphony endures — beautiful and mysterious — how magical it is to be both player and instrument.

We drift, gentle dreams, the sun rises. An odd sound. The ting of a toaster. Dawning — I am neither tree nor forest. I’m a girl. I’m a girl in trouble. The alpacas. Oh, fuck!

We got back to Fox Holler with no trouble, but after coaxing them from the trailer to the forest enclosure, I saw how sick they are. Rabbit, the tiny black alpaca, can barely stand. She’s skeletal with a patchy fleece, scabby skin, and twisted toenails. The rest aren’t much better. They need medicine. But what can I do? A vet will take one look and call the police. I’m so screwed. I wish I was a tree.

I fumble my way through chores and scramble to make it to class on time. I already feel guilty about lying to Inari, especially since they are sick. No need to make it worse.

“Hey Jo! So, Martin Heidegger.”

“The word gibberish comes to mind. Heidegger says, ‘the essence of Dasein lies in its ek-sistence’ and it means ‘being-in-the-world.’ What’s with all the hyphens? And he writes “Only man exists. A rock is, but it does not exist. A tree is, but it does not exist. A horse is, but it does not exist.’ My dude is trippin-to-destruktion. Seriously, he’s the worst philosopher yet. My poor eyes are bleeding!”

“Jo, there’s a Zen saying: “name the colors, blind the eye.” To speak of being, Heidegger wrestles with the limits of language by coining, hyphenating, and redefining words. Is there genius in the madness? Some, to be fair. But I too lack patience with his twaddle. For, at day’s end, Heidegger is a supremacist, obsessed with the separation of man and nature. He says that as the rational speaking calculating animal, only man exists. His gibberish is dangerous. It’s no surprise Heidegger was a dedicated, unrepentant Nazi. Dominion knows no bounds.”

“Wowzah! Inari, I did not know that he was a Nazi. So, to Martin Heidegger, a Jew is, but it does not exist.”

“Scholars debate his Nazism. After the war, he and his philosophy were famously defended by his Jewish mistress, Hannah Arendt. She’s best known for defining ‘the banality of evil’ as the ‘resistance ever to imagine what another person is experiencing.’ Evil is ordinary, she said. Of course, scholars debate everything, and the worst of them engage in gaslighting — they lie deliberately, causing their victims to doubt their own perception, memory, and sanity. And, Jo, apologists are as common as muck. Today’s media is rife with them. Hannah Arendt was right about one thing. Evil is as ordinary as apple pie.”

“Do you think Heidegger was a sociopath, like Hitler?”

“Sociopathy is spectral, and we’re all on the spectrum. In a documentary, Robert McNamara speaks candidly of firebombing Tokyo and using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He’s dispassionate. Until he recalls losing a few of his pilots, and tears flow. Each of us has an empathy switch; many, in fact. They are like circuit breakers in the basement, and every person has a unique off/on configuration. McNamara had no empathy for the Japanese people. That switch was off. But he cared about Americans. His conscience was selective, not absent. An empathy switch can be mapped to any category. The moral circle may be any shape. To draw attention to our ethical idiosyncrasy, it would be better to call it a moral polygon. Descartes excludes all non-human animals. Most people in our society include cats and dogs, but not farm animals.”

“That’s what I don’t understand. Dad knows animals are sentient. Yet he eats pigs and hunts deer. It’s not rational.”

“We exaggerate the power of reason. It’s not enough to know-think. To flip an empathy switch takes know-feel.”

“I see what you did there, Inari.”

“Words are fingers pointing to the moon. Jo, to know or believe is an onion of many layers. Hannah Arendt writes ‘The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.’ Jo, folks believe-know-feel what they want, even as they believe-know-think it’s wrong. So we love dogs and shoot foxes.”

“It’s terrifying. But it feels right. My dreams flip switches. I had no compassion for ladybugs until I was one. That’s a good segue to my activism, if we’re done with Heidegger.”

“Yes, please.”

“Inari, I decided to use technology to save the animals. First, I explored virtual reality as a way to grow empathy. I’d build a dream machine. You could be a giraffe or a butterfly. I’d help folks to feel what it’s like to be a cow in a feedlot or a fish on a hook. But unfortunately, the evidence shows that virtual reality doesn’t build empathy. Or, at least, it’s no more effective than a movie.”

“It’s a good idea, Jo, but I’m unsurprised. Our empathy switches are well-guarded. We humans are adept at wriggling out of moral responsibility. We even gaslight ourselves in order to dodge culpability.”

“Next, I considered robots. A few years back, we visited a museum and played with a robotic baby seal. Mom pinched its tail and made it cry. And then she felt guilty. I did some research. Robots are already teaching emotions to kids with autism. So robots might help, maybe.”

“What else, Jo?”

“Scientists are using artificial intelligence to decode non-human communication. They are feeding massive volumes of audio and video into machine learning models. And, Inari, it’s plausible we’ll soon be able to talk to bats, dolphins, and monkeys. If we can reveal what a pig says or what a chicken thinks, we’ll change hearts and minds. Inari, this technology is poised to create a paradigm shift.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Jo, it’s not as if the Jews in Germany didn’t speak German. So the Nazis deployed propaganda to flip the empathy switch. They depicted Jewish people as rats, lice, foxes, and cockroaches. In employing ‘lower animals’ to dehumanize Jews, the Nazis invoked the Great Chain of Being. Of course, this cynical way of othering is only going to work in a society where animals aren’t people. Genocide thrives on a hierarchy of oppressions.”

“I guess that’s why I gave up on technology. Humans are so cruel to humans. Inari, if we can’t stop war, how can we save animals? I once hoped plant-based meat was the solution. But folks won’t switch. Meat consumption rises every year. Technology is the problem, not the solution.”

“Jo, unfortunately, I agree. Technology serves Moloch. Now, before the abyss gazes back, let’s take a break.”

Ghost and I dash outside to frolic in an Easter landscape by Vincent van Gogh — yellows, reds, blues, every shimmer of pink — the forest rejoices with wildflowers and tree blossom. The tap of a pileated woodpecker draws my attention. As big as a crow, inky black with bold white stripes and a flaming red crest, he is so damn beautiful. 

The veterinarian is coming tomorrow morning. I texted her while Inari was talking. It’s a leap of faith. But what else am I supposed to do? My sick alpacas need help.

Back in class, Inari is ready to roll. “Jo, I’d like to introduce a couple of quantum philosophers. First, there’s Albert Einstein and the four-dimensional continuum of spacetime. He realized that time and space aren’t separate, since the rate at which time passes for an object depends on that object’s velocity relative to an observer. Second, there’s Erwin Schrödinger. He’s famous for an alive-dead cat, and for quantum entanglement, which Albert Einstein infamously called ‘spooky action at a distance.’”

“When you measure a particle in an entangled pair, you instantly know something about the other particle, even if they’re light years apart. It’s the theory behind quantum computing. My God! Inari, quantum theory is nuttier than a squirrel turd, and it’s crazier than a dog in a cat factory.”

“Yep! And it’s not just theory. Entanglement is established fact. As is spacetime. Einstein said that ‘the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.’ And, Jo, Einstein was right. Clocks really do run slow in satellites and jets relative to an observer. And that is what’s so intriguing. In spacetime and entanglement, the act of observation is pivotal. Perhaps it’s the curiosity of consciousness that killed the cat. Maybe ‘mind over matter’ is the God’s honest truth.”

“You’re hurting my brain!”

“I know, Jo. It’s enough to turn a physicist into a philosopher. Schrödinger asks ‘If the world is indeed created by our act of observation, there should be billions of such worlds, one for each of us. How come your world and my world are the same? If something happens in my world, does it happen in your world, too? What causes all these worlds to synchronize with each other?’ And Erwin Schrödinger then answers his own questions by saying,”

There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind.

“Inari, do you want to tear a hole in the matrix?”

“Quantum physics revived the ancient belief of panpsychism or universal consciousness. And it inspired Albert Einstein to write,”

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

“So that’s why I dare to mess with the matrix, because the universe is telling us that consciousness is what counts.”

“My consciousness says we’re out of the illusion of time.”

“Jo, I’m so sorry to have run over. If we’d moved faster, we’d have more time. Go forth and enjoy being-in-the-world.”

Unable to foil spacetime, I ride to Fox Holler. As I pass the barn, I’m startled by Gage, who steps out of the shadows.

“Jo, why’d you bring a herd of sick alpacas onto my farm?”

“Gage, you said don’t ask, don’t tell. It’s obvious why I had to save them. Don’t worry. The vet will be here soon.”

“Jo, I don’t want them sorry sons of bitches spreadin’ plague to my horses. Wash yer boots. And no more animals! Just ‘cause yer purty as a peach, don’t mean ya get yer way. And, Jo, if you get caught, as far as I know, you bought ‘em all. I ain’t goin’ down for you. Ya hear me?”

As I nod, a pickup rolls up the driveway. Gage stalks off. I might say that “I was saved by the vet,” but the pit in my gut is a ravenous black hole. Karen’s a good egg. But as Dad always says, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. If she tells my parents or turns me in, I’m dead.

“Hello, Dr. Altimari, thanks for coming so fast. I’m worried about my alpacas, especially the tiny black one.”

“Mornin’ Jo! Good to see you. And, like I said before, you can just call me Karen. Now, let’s look at these alpacas.”

Once we near the herd, Karen’s all business. The bad news is they’re riddled with parasites and mites. Luckily both are treatable. Karen trims their nails and gives each an injection. She shows me how to drench an alpaca and hands me a gallon jug of Ivermectin. We are so busy, I forget to worry. But as we walk back to her truck, the black hole is back. Who let these alpacas get so damn sick? Did you buy them? Did you steal them? Do your parents know? Man, I still haven’t decided whether to lie or tell the truth.

“It’s good you called, Jo. Your alpacas will be okay. But without medicine, they’d most likely die. I’ve been a country vet since before you were born. So I won’t ask questions. And there’s no charge. I know an angel when I see one. If you need anything else, call me. Happy Easter!”I move to give her a hug, but Karen hops in the truck, waves, and drives away. Maybe she didn’t want to see me cry. I guess this is what they mean when folks talk of the kindness of strangers. I don’t know what to do. So I go to the alpacas. Poor Rabbit is lying down all alone on a bed of dry leaves. Slowly, I come near. I sit down beside her. I don’t touch her or talk. It’s enough to be here, together.

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A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville