Potentially graphic (you've been warned)
The more I introspect, the more I sometimes wonder whether I will ever truly understand myself. Looking back on what I have written in this virtual journal, I like to believe that I have made some smallish strides in figuring out exactly who I am underneath the person that I show to the rest of the world. While I like to think that this is so, every time that I think that I might finally understand myself, I uncover mysteries anew for which I am at a loss to explain.
I am currently enrolled in a summer law class entitled “Bioethics and the Law.” The course is tailor made to suit some of my most cherished academic areas of interest. Discussing issues like abortion, stem-cell research, cloning, euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide are my bread and butter while within the walls of my ivory tower. Although the class’ material is fascinating to me, I have come to a very odd conclusion about myself as I am experiencing the material of the class – I am quite nearly immune from feeling empathy for other people through description alone.
The text for the class involves discussions of medical issues which are truly quite terrible. There are infants which are born with a disorder known as anencephaly (which literally means ‘no head’). These infants usually have a head and face, but for some reasons have failed to develop a cerebrum (the large variegated chunk of your brain that makes up about 70% of the organ). The cerebrum is the part of your brain responsible for all of your cognitive processes. The infants usually still retain the ability to have a heart beat, regulate their internal temperature, digest food, blink, and breathe, since some basic parts of their brains (the brain stem and cerebellum) are frequently still intact. However, the child will never see the world around it, hear sounds, smell or taste objects near it, or feel the touch of another person. These infants in some cases cannot actually perceive pain. There are couples out there this very night who will give birth to a living being for whom they have waited for nine months or longer, who will realize with dismay that the fragile child that they have birthed is purely vegetative.
There are adults tonight who, as devout members of the Church of Christ, Scientist (who reject all medical care), will refuse their small child medications that would save that child’s life, preferring to pray to their God over the child as a way to make him better. The child will die, screaming in pain and discomfort, while his parents whisper their words into the sky beside him. The child’s suffering is heard by few, and in many states cannot be rectified by law (lots of states prohibit neglect and abuse claims from being brought for actions of Christian Scientists or other faith healers). There are cases where these children have bled to death under the watchful eye of their parents, and as their precious life’s blood seeps away, their cries grow fainter and fainter, until at last, their body begins to shut down from lack of oxygen.
The text tells me of the nature of partial birth abortion procedures, in which the cervix of a pregnant woman is dilated and the fetus carried within her turned and brought through the cervix feet first (breeching), so that the head of the fetus remains inside her womb. The head of the fetus will then usually be punctured, the cranial contents (the developing brain) scrambled and sucked out via a vacuum pump, the fetus disarticulated (dismembered), and the tiny body removed.
None of these descriptions elicits from me the slightest disgust or revulsion. Some of them raise my ire. Some cause me to contemplate the nature of life, what precisely we find precious about it, and whether that quality is found within various entities above. In none of these cases, does my emotional trigger reach a breaking point, causing me to treat this as other than a purely clinical description.
At the same time, though, my emotional responses do engage over the harms and pains dealt out by humans to many non-human animals. Perhaps a year and a half ago, I read a story concerning some youths in Canada who had tied a housecat to a barn rafter via a long rope. They took a stick and beat the cat like a piñata. While the cat meowed and screamed, they took a knife and partially skinned it. With careful (almost surgical) precision, they sliced open its stomach, allowing its entrails to spill out. When at last these youths had had their fun, they slit the cat’s throat and let it bleed to death onto the barn below. As if this weren’t bad enough, the youths videotaped the entire escapade, so that they would be able to relive the experience by watching it again.
When I read the news story about that encounter, I was livid for days. I felt physically ill. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I always used to think that the phrase ‘seeing red’ just meant that you were angry. I hadn’t ever realized that it described an actual and very real state of anger. I was filled with a restless energy and paced around my room, other people’s rooms, and the halls of my school, at once angry and profoundly grieving for the loss of a single housecat in such a brutal fashion.
Three days ago, the same emotions were stirred in me once again. It appears that a man living in Great Britain took it upon himself to play ‘Vet’ with a dog who has been his faithful companion. His dog had been hit by a truck, and one of its forepaws injured. The man did not pay for a veterinarian to fix his dog’s leg, but rather spread a tarp in his kitchen, heated an iron bar to glowing on his stove, used an electric turkey carver to amputate his dog’s leg, and then cauterized the wound with the iron bar. To suggest that this is an acceptable practice is the height of barbarism, and calls to mind scenes from the movie ‘Glory’ in which civil war doctors are seen (in silhouette) amputating a man’s leg with an ordinary wood saw, while holding him down. I recall his screams more than I recall the dialogue which was spoken in the foreground while this occurred behind. I can't imagine that the dog screamed any less forcefully.
For most of my life, I have empathized with non-human animals' plights. Humans inflict terrible pains and suffering on our slightly less gifted cousins, some of which have crossed the line into the realm of devilish tortures. I can't bring myself to squish bugs, and honestly cried one night in college after attending a party where the hosts had used as centerpieces small glasses of water with goldfish in them (the goldfish could barely move, and most were dead by night's end from lack of oxygen... or being swallowed, alive and squirming, by drunken college boys who should have known that the fish would be dissolved alive in their stomach acid). I have occasionally given consideration to the idea of entering the field of ‘animal law,’ which would allow me to argue cases about the rights of non-human animals and try to find ways to protect them from the horrors that we inflict upon them for what seem like fairly unconvincing reasons. I have long maintained that many of our non-human animal companions on this planet are in possession of those faculties which make our own lives so precious. Some can think as well as our own children, solve complex problems in novel ways suggesting insight into physical relationships like cause-and-effect, engage in deliberate deception and truth-telling, and have hopes and dreams for their futures. Some, like Washoe (the sign-language using Chimpanzee) even appear capable of feeling profound emotional responses to things around her. I’m too lazy to go look up the passage in a book I read recently (if you are curious about it yourself, check out “Drawing the Line” by Steven Wise), but a Chimpanzee in Washoe’s enclosure was pregnant, and Washoe was excited about the coming of the baby. When the pregnant chimpanzee was taken away for birthing, Washoe repeatedly approached her trainers to ask where the baby was and when it would arrive. The other chimpanzee returned after a miscarriage, and Washoe excitedly asked the returning chimpanzee about her baby to which the mother said “Baby gone.” Washoe repeated “Baby gone” a few times in disbelief, and then signed “I’m sorry” to her friend from the enclosure.
To treat all non-human animals as property is no less an affront to liberty than is treating as property our fellow human beings. To treat them not only as property, but as property which we can feel free to destroy or harm at will is not only an affront to liberty, but an assault on the very fabric of decency.
How, though, can I empathize with someone so different from myself (a chimpanzee, a housecat, or a man's dog), when I have a very hard time empathizing with others of my own species? Am I callous for not caring as deeply as I ought for human suffering or am I too empathetic for mourning over the loss of non-human animals?
I am currently enrolled in a summer law class entitled “Bioethics and the Law.” The course is tailor made to suit some of my most cherished academic areas of interest. Discussing issues like abortion, stem-cell research, cloning, euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide are my bread and butter while within the walls of my ivory tower. Although the class’ material is fascinating to me, I have come to a very odd conclusion about myself as I am experiencing the material of the class – I am quite nearly immune from feeling empathy for other people through description alone.
The text for the class involves discussions of medical issues which are truly quite terrible. There are infants which are born with a disorder known as anencephaly (which literally means ‘no head’). These infants usually have a head and face, but for some reasons have failed to develop a cerebrum (the large variegated chunk of your brain that makes up about 70% of the organ). The cerebrum is the part of your brain responsible for all of your cognitive processes. The infants usually still retain the ability to have a heart beat, regulate their internal temperature, digest food, blink, and breathe, since some basic parts of their brains (the brain stem and cerebellum) are frequently still intact. However, the child will never see the world around it, hear sounds, smell or taste objects near it, or feel the touch of another person. These infants in some cases cannot actually perceive pain. There are couples out there this very night who will give birth to a living being for whom they have waited for nine months or longer, who will realize with dismay that the fragile child that they have birthed is purely vegetative.
There are adults tonight who, as devout members of the Church of Christ, Scientist (who reject all medical care), will refuse their small child medications that would save that child’s life, preferring to pray to their God over the child as a way to make him better. The child will die, screaming in pain and discomfort, while his parents whisper their words into the sky beside him. The child’s suffering is heard by few, and in many states cannot be rectified by law (lots of states prohibit neglect and abuse claims from being brought for actions of Christian Scientists or other faith healers). There are cases where these children have bled to death under the watchful eye of their parents, and as their precious life’s blood seeps away, their cries grow fainter and fainter, until at last, their body begins to shut down from lack of oxygen.
The text tells me of the nature of partial birth abortion procedures, in which the cervix of a pregnant woman is dilated and the fetus carried within her turned and brought through the cervix feet first (breeching), so that the head of the fetus remains inside her womb. The head of the fetus will then usually be punctured, the cranial contents (the developing brain) scrambled and sucked out via a vacuum pump, the fetus disarticulated (dismembered), and the tiny body removed.
None of these descriptions elicits from me the slightest disgust or revulsion. Some of them raise my ire. Some cause me to contemplate the nature of life, what precisely we find precious about it, and whether that quality is found within various entities above. In none of these cases, does my emotional trigger reach a breaking point, causing me to treat this as other than a purely clinical description.
At the same time, though, my emotional responses do engage over the harms and pains dealt out by humans to many non-human animals. Perhaps a year and a half ago, I read a story concerning some youths in Canada who had tied a housecat to a barn rafter via a long rope. They took a stick and beat the cat like a piñata. While the cat meowed and screamed, they took a knife and partially skinned it. With careful (almost surgical) precision, they sliced open its stomach, allowing its entrails to spill out. When at last these youths had had their fun, they slit the cat’s throat and let it bleed to death onto the barn below. As if this weren’t bad enough, the youths videotaped the entire escapade, so that they would be able to relive the experience by watching it again.
When I read the news story about that encounter, I was livid for days. I felt physically ill. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I always used to think that the phrase ‘seeing red’ just meant that you were angry. I hadn’t ever realized that it described an actual and very real state of anger. I was filled with a restless energy and paced around my room, other people’s rooms, and the halls of my school, at once angry and profoundly grieving for the loss of a single housecat in such a brutal fashion.
Three days ago, the same emotions were stirred in me once again. It appears that a man living in Great Britain took it upon himself to play ‘Vet’ with a dog who has been his faithful companion. His dog had been hit by a truck, and one of its forepaws injured. The man did not pay for a veterinarian to fix his dog’s leg, but rather spread a tarp in his kitchen, heated an iron bar to glowing on his stove, used an electric turkey carver to amputate his dog’s leg, and then cauterized the wound with the iron bar. To suggest that this is an acceptable practice is the height of barbarism, and calls to mind scenes from the movie ‘Glory’ in which civil war doctors are seen (in silhouette) amputating a man’s leg with an ordinary wood saw, while holding him down. I recall his screams more than I recall the dialogue which was spoken in the foreground while this occurred behind. I can't imagine that the dog screamed any less forcefully.
For most of my life, I have empathized with non-human animals' plights. Humans inflict terrible pains and suffering on our slightly less gifted cousins, some of which have crossed the line into the realm of devilish tortures. I can't bring myself to squish bugs, and honestly cried one night in college after attending a party where the hosts had used as centerpieces small glasses of water with goldfish in them (the goldfish could barely move, and most were dead by night's end from lack of oxygen... or being swallowed, alive and squirming, by drunken college boys who should have known that the fish would be dissolved alive in their stomach acid). I have occasionally given consideration to the idea of entering the field of ‘animal law,’ which would allow me to argue cases about the rights of non-human animals and try to find ways to protect them from the horrors that we inflict upon them for what seem like fairly unconvincing reasons. I have long maintained that many of our non-human animal companions on this planet are in possession of those faculties which make our own lives so precious. Some can think as well as our own children, solve complex problems in novel ways suggesting insight into physical relationships like cause-and-effect, engage in deliberate deception and truth-telling, and have hopes and dreams for their futures. Some, like Washoe (the sign-language using Chimpanzee) even appear capable of feeling profound emotional responses to things around her. I’m too lazy to go look up the passage in a book I read recently (if you are curious about it yourself, check out “Drawing the Line” by Steven Wise), but a Chimpanzee in Washoe’s enclosure was pregnant, and Washoe was excited about the coming of the baby. When the pregnant chimpanzee was taken away for birthing, Washoe repeatedly approached her trainers to ask where the baby was and when it would arrive. The other chimpanzee returned after a miscarriage, and Washoe excitedly asked the returning chimpanzee about her baby to which the mother said “Baby gone.” Washoe repeated “Baby gone” a few times in disbelief, and then signed “I’m sorry” to her friend from the enclosure.
To treat all non-human animals as property is no less an affront to liberty than is treating as property our fellow human beings. To treat them not only as property, but as property which we can feel free to destroy or harm at will is not only an affront to liberty, but an assault on the very fabric of decency.
How, though, can I empathize with someone so different from myself (a chimpanzee, a housecat, or a man's dog), when I have a very hard time empathizing with others of my own species? Am I callous for not caring as deeply as I ought for human suffering or am I too empathetic for mourning over the loss of non-human animals?
posted by The Academian | 10:15 PM
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