The different ideological standpoints that people hold
towards nature often influence or come into alignment with their morals
regarding animals. Many people are exposed primarily to mediated
representations of animals such as television characters or animals displayed
in zoos. By separating the human and animal world, society’s (mis)understandings
of nature are taking over actual experiences. Throughout all of the pieces I
reviewed this week, there was an emphasis on how humans perceive animals, how
humans feel more powerful than them, and how society’s institutionalized
misconceptions of animals create barriers between humans and animals. When people
have detached or dominating feelings towards animals they lose site of the
vital importance all creatures have to the global ecosystem.
As discussed by Julia B. Corbett in Communicating
Nature, our perception of animals are “impossible to divorce pop culture
messages from.”(178). She highlights that it is impossible to remove your
understanding of animals away from your epistemological background. What is
even more troubling in our understanding of animals is that it is an
understanding based upon human, not animal, experience. When we describe
situations or movements taken by animals, we explain them in humanistic terms,
humans anthropomorphize creatures because we know no other way to explain their
lived experience. I find what she says
to be exactly correct in the sense that we cannot fully understand animals as
we construct them by our terms, but then I also Alice Walker’s empathy for Blue
to be an almost full understanding of an animal by a human.
In Am
I Blue? author Alice Walker, is able to understand and communicate
appreciation as well as sadness with Blue, a neighbor’s horse who is kept by
himself. We are assuming that Blue waiting by the tree is his appreciation and
that his actions after his mate got taken were grief, but I don’t believe that
these assumptions are ungrounded. Walker’s writing brings to light the very
special connection that people can share with animals if they choose to. As her
writing is a memoir, we read it like thoughts of our own; we are able to
understand her experience. When she says that the animals have not changed, she
touches on the fact that our relationships with animals are heavily influenced
and constructed by media and other outside influences. While Corbett notes that
younger children are actually the most indifferent towards animal’s existence,
it is not how much they care that is important but that their understanding is
on still being shaped. When children experience an animal they are not as
ingrained with the binaries of communication that adults are; children assume
to understand in the same way Walker does- because how could you not?
In The Cove viewers learn the history
of activist Richard O’Barry, a former trainer for the show “Flipper” turned
dolphin liberator. O’Barry describes how his relationship with one of the
dolphins and his experience with her depression and ultimate suicide was what
changed his mind about animal’s rights. Dolphins are one of the animals where
in which people think have worthy sentience and cute enough for people to not
want others to kill. Unfortunately, as shown in The Cove, they do not rank above whales and that many efforts to
help stop the mass killings of dolphins in Japan are often overlooked. I also
felt that it is surprising that this film was not as popular as Blackfish,
which contained a similar subject matter, but was much less gruesome, and about
orca whales. Unsurprisingly many animals, including dolphins and pigs, are
looked over regardless of proved intelligence and emotional capacity. As we are
able to understand Walker’s connection with Blue, we are utterly horrified at
the fishermen’s brutal slaughters of dolphins. When the audience is finally
shown the footage of the killings they cannot help but go through multiple
levels of shock and disgust. Witnessing people so detached from the screams of
dying animals is a jolting realization to most regardless of their stance on
animal rights.
How we approach animals is also constructed through
whether we consider them a threat or not. Predatory animals, “pests,” and
insects often incur the wrath of humans due to their perceived notions of
danger and disease. The dominant view towards animals is an anthropomorphic one
in which we should and do have the power to control or eliminate specific
species. In Dwellings
Linda Hogan touches on how the relationships humans have created with predators,
specifically wolves, is one of competition where people must fight them for
food or territory. This “us vs. them” mentality and relationship though creates
issues for not only predators, but our entire ecosystem. When humans look at
the world as only theirs, they ignore how all creatures work towards the proper
sustainability of the world. Demonizing predators ultimately helps no one, but
also works to sever the intrinsic connections we feel with animals that both
Walker and Hogan describe. Hogan’s accounts of Native American tribes dying
from eating poisoned meat left for wolves’ works to bring the reader more
aligned with a positive view of wolves and overall nature. She does this by
literally humanizing the murders of wolves and therefore bringing to light the
suffering and complete disregard towards general life that those in power have.
In the article I found from MSNBC, “Progress
for elephants, and for the animals rights movement,” author Peter Singer
looks to celebrate the victory of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey’s Circus
decision to phase out use of elephants. Singer
also uses this article as a way to convey that animal rights have come leaps
and bounds. His response to the question of whether animal rights have really
progressed conveys a sense of experience and therefore an opinion you should be
able to trust. His analysis of our progression though is one that is supposed
to convey positive evolution to the reader who may not know the in’s and out’s
of Animal Rights Politics as he does.
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