Animals Over History, and a Human Imperative

We love our animals.  I don’t just mean we - love our animals, I mean we as humans often enjoy caring for them and taking their company.  But what do we actually think of our furrier companions?  When we say we “have a pet”, is that more like how one has a child, or a lawn mower, or an iPod?  And has it always been that way?  Most importantly: should it?

The answers to these sorts of questions will change depending on the person giving them, of course.  Some people view their animals as tools, some as sources of entertainment.  Others fawn over them, and a few write blogs about them.  But the ways in which we understand them, and thus the ways in which we treat them, has had a marked trend through history.

I believe it’s safe to say that today, we as a species view animals as inferior devices.  Fewer and fewer people are living with animals as we become more urban, and perhaps as animals (perhaps humans included) become less and less important or interesting in our day to day life.  The ratio is a little higher than the answers to a casual question at a lecture I mentioned last article – about 63% of Americans have pets – but this figure is steadily decreasing, and by and large we are becoming more detached from other species.

More importantly, the length to which we consider the thoughts and feelings of non-humans is a pale figure.  Many individuals – otherwise very bright individuals – believe that animals have a stunted or even nonexistent emotional capacity.  There are individuals who believe (somehow?) that animals are incapable of learning, and operate nearly entirely on instinct.  And I don’t think it’s stretching it to say that majority opinion is that humans are the only creatures capable of love.

What is the reason behind this?  Why do we think this way?  Perhaps it is from personal experience, or more specifically a lack thereof, with the dwindling number of people who have pets, and the even smaller number of individuals who care enough to closely observe their behaviour.  But one would think that a lack of experience would create ambivalence, or at least just as many individuals believing in their inexperience in an emotional and thoughtful animal.

This trend towards belief in a more mechanical animal, one might argue, began with the Scientific Revolution – more specifically, perhaps, with one René Descartes, who believed, as he formulated his ideas on mind, and body-soul dualism, that animals lack a soul, and thus lacked a mind.  He quite literally viewed them as machines, going so far as to say that they are incapable of feeling pain, and exercised this belief in various horrific ways.

But where did this frightful concept come from?  Descartes was, along with being a scientist, a Roman Catholic, and his idea of the soul that he is so famous for considering is from Christianity – which, among other things, states plainly that humanity is the only species in possession of a soul.  Prior to Descartes, this simply meant that all dogs do not in fact go to heaven, but as René began to equate the mind with the soul, the step towards complete anthropocentrism became obvious.  This thinking, I believe, is the origin of our modern devaluing of other creatures, and starting in the mid-twentieth century, the majority of experimentation leading to medical or pharmaceutical breakthroughs is on animals.

Before Descartes, and most certainly prior to the later Victorian Age (in which Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty was published: a highly successful piece of animal fiction that, as animal fiction generally did up until and including that time, targeted adults), animals were viewed differently.  While individuals still owned such creatures as cattle, animals who can generally be ascribed a greater life expectancy, such as dogs, cats, and horses, were not owned in the same sense as one owns a cow – the sense of a tool, or a piece of currency (the word for “wealth” was the same word as the one for “cattle” in Old Norse, an ancestor of English).  Instead, they were more commonly viewed as companions or partners, and fiction commonly utilized them as having minds equivalent to most humans (and superior to some).  Horses and dogs were indeed bought and sold, but so were humans, and it was considered improper to mistreat either one.  Wild animals were ascribed a great deal of respect; it wasn’t until after our friend Descartes that such practices as recreational fox hunts were established.

In short, there was a great deal of what we would today call anthropomorphization, which today we feel is a bad thing.  But is it?  Certainly, it is detrimental to ascribe all humanness to other animals: For instance, it’s foolish now to think, as people of the tenth century AD did, that animals have their own languages equivalent to our own, and moreover we should not pretend that they see and hear the same way we do, and that they miss the same smells; this ascription remains today perhaps the biggest crime against animal intellect.  However, does the fact that they sense the world and interact with it in ways different from our own, that cannot be immediately noticed by us without a great deal of experience and sometimes even extrapolation, that they have a comparatively stunted set of thoughts and feelings, or even none at all?

For those reading, and perhaps wondering now about just what (and how much) is going on inside the head of your household cat or dog, consider something of a happy medium: animals cannot be said to have language, so we might infer that their thought is of a different breed than what we are used to, and may follow a different logical set, like that in a dream: not necessarily inferior (I would off-handedly suggest that it is capable of less complex interactions, but may formulate them more efficiently; I won’t get into it here), but sometimes difficult to understand from a humanistic perspective.  More importantly, the majority of animals don’t care a whole lot about their eyesight, and rely much more greatly on their senses of smell, touch (whiskers) and hearing; this means that, while they miss some things that we think are obvious, they also sense a lot of things that we would never be able to.  This is also the reason that, when you are feeling sad or ill, an animal you are close to will often seem to sense it, even from a distance; and additionally, the reason your animal does “stupid” things, or appears unpredictable.

So, for the sake not only of the animals you live with, but also that of your own enlightenment and understanding, consider that there are ways of thinking, perceiving and feeling that are radically different from your own, and that their exemplification in an individual does not equate to a lack of thought, perception and emotion.  Take time to observe your animals.  When your dog goes “apeshit”, consider things from her perspective as best you can.  Make connections from recent circumstances to her actions.  When your cat attacks you for apparently no reason, don’t immediately jump to the solution that he is simply a moron.  I’ve lived with animals all my life and I can say that there is always a reason, just like there is with us, only different.  When you begin to unravel the behaviours of certain species you become familiar with, you can start to discover how they think – and then, how they feel.  And that’s something that I, as a psychologist and an animal lover, believe is not merely worthwhile, but rather a human imperative.

9RTVNKPGUJGS

Why NOT Zoophilia?

There has never, in history, been a civilization that has normatively or officially approved of overtly romantic or sexual interactions between humans and animals.  There have been times where it simply wasn’t punished, or was practiced for less-than-everyday reasons, such as ritual – certain practices involving kings and horses in certain European cultures during the Bronze Age come to mind – but it was never normal, and never considered a viable romantic orientation; in above example, the horse was afterwards devoured.  Why is this?  Extending this question, why today do we have, if anything, only an even more negative attitude towards zoophilia?

This seems like a silly question to most: when asked to rationalize an attitude towards this question, the first reaction tends to come from the gut, along with their breakfast.  Although we’re more tolerant today of that woman who just likes her cats a lot, bestiality at least is still simply gross.  But grossness, in a serious discussion, is not enough to warrant arresting or even killing someone; at least it’s not today.  Nor, for most – at least in the developed world – is religion. (And besides, the Bible only condemns bestiality twice: once in Exodus, once in Leviticus, which are two books often hummed and hawed over, and not once is it called a sin.)

People will cite health reasons too: that one can catch all manner of illnesses and infections from animals.  However, this is provably false: as I discuss briefly in my last post, the number of zoonoses – diseases that can be transferred from animal to human – are extremely small in comparison to the number of STIs that can be transmitted between humans.  As for infection, so long as an animal is well-cared-for, there is little risk.  Most infections you read about on the “lol” section of your favourite news site arise when someone sneaks onto farmland to bang X ungulate, which obviously isn’t going to be as sanitary from an anthropocentric viewpoint as an animal kept with people.  And of course, the same individuals support freedom for practices that are inherently self-destructive, such as drinking, smoking, or the use of light drugs such as cannabis.

The debate about bestiality typically boils down to animal rights: the idea that animals cannot consent.  This argument, I find, is indicative of an individual who has spent little time with animals in their life.  Indeed, I attended a lecture a few weeks ago in which the lecturer asked a room of two hundred or so people how many of them had pets.  Maybe ten percent raised their hands.  When he asked off-handedly how many felt attached to their pets, only half of that figure did.  The assumption, then, that someone who believes that animals are so unthinking and unfeeling that they are not even able to articulate a very basic desire actually has no experience to back this reasoning seems to be a fairly solid one; indeed, when I end up in a debate with such an individual, I can usually flabbergast them by showing them some random video of an animal in heat.  I beg your pardon, sir, but does your girlfriend scream and brandish her genitalia in front of you when she wants something?  Oh, but it’s not verbal consent, therefore it’s not legal.  Well, does your significant other ever even ask you if you want to have sex, or does it just happen – clothes start falling off, as it were – because it’s a natural thing to do?

This debate and the health debate are both hypocritical veils for that original, gut-driven objection.  So we’re still left with this original question: why, when so many other taboos based on nothing but faith and proximity discomfort have been abolished, is zoophilia still illegal in most parts of the world, and is despised by the majority of the population in every nation?  I believe the reason is two-part: adherence to old values, which is a hallmark of culture itself and has retarded such progressive thought, such as gender equality and religious tolerance, from manifesting; and our view of animals in general.  We, as modern humans, see animals at once as lovable, animated creatures, and as inferiors to be exploited by tools.  Hospitals employ cats and dogs to visit their patients because, as a species, we adore them, while at once administering to the same patients medications that were discovered only through cruel experimentation on, yes, cats and dogs.

What does this mean?  Simply, our animals are objects: we may dispose of them, so long as we don’t have to see it happen.  We don’t have to learn about them, because there are more important things to be attending to that involve us.  They are, in short, slaves, only without the non-crazy emancipation movements, so those who do become attached to them in some of the ways we generally reserve only for humans are treated as though they are willingly lowering themselves to the level of the slave – something we have always found distressing.  Couple this, of course, with the foreignness of non-human anatomies – as foreignness almost always produces an instinctual withdrawal – and you have a great deal of distress regarding the situation of the zoophile.

From this, we can glean a solution: although we cannot eliminate resistance to social or cultural change – nor, I believe, should we, for too much change at once can be harmful – we can work towards reconstructing the bond between humans and other animals, showing people that, apart from our ability to speak and produce culture, there is very little difference between ourselves and other species.  Following this is perhaps the more difficult imperative: we, as zoophiles, must come out in force, so that the concept of a human who desires romantic relationships with non-humans is not so bizarre to the common folk.  I believe that it is actually up to us to achieve both of these goals: with the failure of such movements as PETA and the ALF on account of being batshit insane, we are the best individuals for the job to show the world just what animals are capable of, and how similar we truly are.  Only once this is accomplished will our world take that one giant step closer towards rationality and equality, and will we be allowed to live without fear.