Animals Are People
A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville
Chapter 17
A few days later, I jangle into Fox Holler. After last night’s big storm, the ground is littered with branches and twigs. I ditch my bike, turn towards the barn, and nearly jump out of my skin. Gage grins. Beer in one hand, chainsaw in the other, the man sure loves to scare the hell out of me.
“Mornin’ Sunshine! Black cherry came down on the fence. I’ll help shift it before your scraggly ass alpacas drop dead.”
“Are they okay? Gage, the alpacas were doing really good yesterday. Their medicine is working. What’s wrong now?”
“Don’t you worry none. Yer raggedy-ass alpacas will be fine, long as we get that cherry out before its leaves wilt. After that, they hold enough cyanide to kill a two-ton bull.”
It’s hard, sweaty work. It takes over an hour to clear the tree and mend the fence. Gage still gives me the creeps, especially as he’s drinking. But I am grateful. Gage saved my alpacas. I had no idea that trees could be so toxic.
The next morning, Inari starts class with a sigh.
“Okay, Jo, we might as well get started.”
“Who licked the red off your candy? Seriously, Inari, you look like you saw a ghost. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“My back hurts. Let’s begin. Tell me about behaviorism.”
“Well, for starters, John Watson is so dumb, the man could throw hisself on the ground, and miss.”
Inari cracks a smile. “Well put, country girl. Do go on.”
“In The Behaviorist Manifesto, written in 1918, John Watson argues that it’s hard to study consciousness, so we must declare it out of bounds, saying, ‘The time seems to have come when psychology must discard all reference to consciousness,’ and ‘Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics.’ Inari, it’s like old drunkard joke; hey, scientists, gather round, and let’s all search right here under the streetlamp, where the light is good, even though I dropped my damn keys elsewhere.”
“What else, Jo?”
“He tells scientists to banish ‘all subjective terms such as sensation, perception, image, desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion,’ since the behaviorist must admit no inner life.”
“How does B. F. Skinner contribute to behaviorism?”
“Skinner admits the mind exists, but he says it’s better to study behavior by using the Skinner Box, an animal torture chamber with an electrified grid, loudspeaker, lights, response lever, and food dispenser. He uses positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment to modify behavior. That’s why Skinner is called the father of operant conditioning. The bastard makes me sick.”
“Me too, Jo. Those two mad men created the behaviorist paradigm which dominated the life sciences for most of the twentieth century. Their map of operant conditioning fixed attention on stimulus and response. Scientists were blinded by a mental model in which animal thoughts and feelings simply don’t exist. But the map is not the territory. The poor animals did suffer — enormously. They still do.”
“That’s what I don’t understand, Inari. How can a scientist not see, or pretend not to see, the suffering of an animal?”
“Behaviorism, like Christianity, trades guilt for faith. Both grant the dominion of man over beast. René Descartes offers the same deal: animals are automata, so do whatever you wish. This willing suspension of the senses enables disbelief. But, Jo, the darkness isn’t absolute. My dad was a lab scientist at Pfizer. He was proud to invent drugs to save human lives. But when I accused him of animal cruelty, he got incredibly mad. Later, I figured out that Dad used anger to mask shame. He wasn’t entirely blind.”
“Inari, that’s why I don’t talk with my dad about his cows.”
“You know what farmers and scientists have in common? They give animals numbers instead of names. They say names introduce bias. What they don’t say is that numbers turn subjects into objects. But they do. That’s why the Nazis used prisoner numbers in the concentration camps.”
“A few years back, Mom and I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. It was like a factory farm for humans, such massive scale, so incredibly brutal. The Nazi soldiers tattooed and branded those numbers into human beings.”
“So we say, ‘Never Again,’ yet turn a blind eye to animals. In our first class, Jo, you said, ‘Knowsy is a person too, it’s obvious.’ But that is blasphemy! Under the doctrine of behaviorism, scientists who committed the mortal sin of anthropomorphism were run out of town. Until the cognitive revolution of the 1950s, the ridiculous idea that only humans are sentient was scientific dogma.”
“So behaviorism is an example of a useful belief.”
“Yes. In the words of Upton Sinclair, ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’ Watson’s behaviorist manifesto classified psychology as an objective natural science. As the social sciences get less prestige and funding, this categorization was useful indeed. Ironically, the reign of behaviorism as a paradigm belies the myth of objectivity by exposing science as subject to taboos, fads, and isms.”
“Folks believe what they want.”
“And folks believe who they want, too. Watson, for example, is celebrated in the canon, yet his life was scandalous. In school, he was arrested for fighting and for discharging firearms. And at work, he was accused of animal cruelty. Watson is infamous for the Little Albert experiment in which he terrorized a disabled human baby, committed fraud, and had an extramarital affair with his undergraduate research assistant. Later in life, he grew rich by applying psychology to advertising. Watson sexualized women to sell cigarettes and toothpaste, while dispensing such sage advice to parents as ‘Never hug and kiss [children], never let them sit in your lap.’ Jo, isn’t it odd the scientific community revered this man for decades?”
Inari stops. It’s so subtle, but I see them wince. It must be the back pain. “Okay, Jo, let’s take a fifteen-minute break.”
In the kitchen, I palm a couple of Mom’s cider donuts. And then we’re out into the sun. Ghost races ahead, while I savor my sugar. As I near the barn, the goats baa and the hens tuk. They want to move to the forest. “Okay y’all, chill, I’m here.” I open and close gates, and my willful creatures, obviously excited and happy, dash into the woods in search of snacks. How on earth could anyone not see that animals have an inner life? Cooperation relies on theory of mind — the awareness of others’ beliefs, hopes, emotions, and thoughts. Mindreading is how we get along.
Speaking of which, I worry for Inari. They are slurring words worse than ever. The meds aren’t working. I can tell they are afraid. But they don’t like to talk about it. I don’t know how to skirt that stiff upper lip. I’ll ask Mom. I lick the last of the sugar from my lips and head back to class.
“Can art save the world? No. Can art save more starfish? Inari, that’s the question I decided to ask. Cave paintings are man hunts beast, so not a great start. Leonardo da Vinci drew animals with emotion. I love his sketch of a roaring lion. But it’s not activism. It doesn’t move people to act. Sadly, the best examples are bad. Animals are popular in advertising and propaganda. The Nazis depicted Jews as rats, cockroaches, and vultures. Joe Camel sold cigarettes. The cows of Chick-fil-A say, ‘Eat Mor Chikin.’ Positive examples are rare. Bansky’s Sirens of the Lambs has animal plushies peeking and squeaking from a slaughterhouse delivery truck. And PETA’s rainforest billboard, which depicts a cow eating a parrot, says, ‘eating meat kills more animals than you think.’ Inari, I know that outrage porn gets attention and funding. But is it effective? And what about the collateral damage and backlash? Does it harm more than it helps? I don’t know. Inari, I love art, but I doubt that it can save the world. I suspect that most artivists are preaching to the choir.”
“Jo, not all cave paintings are man hunts beast. Much of the art of our ancestors, etched into stones and bones, is indicative of animism. We discover ancient pictograms and petroglyphs all around the world that reflect deep reverence for our animal kin. But I agree the best examples are bad. My favorite grandma adored Joe Camel, and he murdered her in her sixties with lung cancer. Sorry, go on.”
“Emily Dickinson says,”
She sights a Bird — she chuckles —
She flattens — then she crawls —
She runs without the look of feet —
Her eyes increase to Balls —
Her Jaws stir — twitching — hungry —
Her Teeth can hardly stand —
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first —
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,
The Hopes so juicy ripening —
You almost bathed your Tongue —
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes —
And fled with every one —
“And now, Inari, you know what it’s like to be a cat. Words are magic. Poems are spells. I am enchanted. I wish I could save the world with verse. Too bad nobody reads poetry.”
“Jo. I’m wordless. You cast a spell on me. What else?”
“Pete Seeger wails,”
I heard the song,
Of the world’s last whale,
As I rocked in the moonlight,
And reefed the sail,
It’ll happen to you,
Also without fail,
If it happens to me,
Sang the world’s last whale.
“And I am drowning in an ocean of tears. Pete Seeger was inspired by the first recording of the songs of humpback whales, which also helped lead to a global moratorium on whaling. So clearly, music has the power to move people.”
“Jo, you’ll have me in tears, if you’re not careful. ABBA sings, ‘And I dream I’m an eagle, And I dream I can spread my wings.’ And I think of you, Jo. That’s why we are doing this together, because I want you to be able to spread your wings, in the best way possible. Jo, I believe in you!”
What do I say? I’m unused to intimacy. I’m afraid I’ll blush.
“Thanks, Inari. Here’s the trouble. Animal rights songs aren’t popular. Most are punk, and nobody groks that. And check out Meat is Murder by The Smiths. The album’s on heavy rotation, but the song, not so much. As the folk music of civil rights and the hip hop of Black Lives Matter show, music is for tribal bonding. But songs that grow empathy for the other, well they are as rare as hen’s teeth.”
“Or as rare as a teenager using that turn of phrase.”
“Art that’s too honest scares folks away. So, to scale activism by enlisting others, an artist must enchant, not offend. And yes, I do love speakin’ Southside. Down here in Dixie, our lingo gots more critters than Noah’s Ark.”
“Aren’t you bright as a button? To your point, Jo, vegan straight edge was a thing in the eighties. We embraced art, activism, and abstinence. No sex, drugs, or sausage rolls! Of course, animal rights runs counter to culture. So the normies classed us as hooligans — I was just a punk.”
“That I did not know! Inari, you gots to gimme the lore! Tattoos? Piercings? Inari, did you punk your hair?”
“Jo, you have no idea! And, oh look, we’re out of time.”
That evening, early to dinner, I ponder the tree who became our table. I don’t know what to make of my dream. Was I really inside the mind of a tree? Are trees sentient? Is carpentry unethical? Am I out of my freakin’ mind?
Before I can answer, Dad plonks the salad bowl, and Mom passes a basket of warm peasant bread. “So, not only is it expensive, it’s in China, and they won’t give me a date.” Dad’s bitching about tractor parts and supply chains again. I am so over his whining. Time to change the topic.
“So I’ve got a true-false. Today, when I went to collect the mail, I saw a man in orange knitted overalls carrying a gallon jug in one hand and a rabbit in the other, or down by the pond, I saw a black rat snake chase a black rat snake, or a cow died of cyanide at the farm next to Gage’s.”
“I’ll take the man in orange,” says Dad. Mom takes the cow.
“Mom’s right. The man in orange with the bunny is real.”
“I figured wild cherry killed the cow,” says Dad, “and it’s mating season, so that would explain the snakes.”
“Was the rabbit alive?” asks Mom.“Yep. I saw her nose twitch. She’s a gorgeous silver angora. The man in the orange knitted overalls had her cradled under his arm like a football. Life is stranger than fiction.”
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville