We are here, and so are they

By Fauzia Aminah Rasheed

As Alice Walker from Am I Blue so eloquently put it, “…Yes, the animals are forced to become merely ‘images’ of what they once so beautifully expressed.” Just like with the environment, to be an “animal lover” automatically separates you from the average person. To take into consideration that a species other than humans might have actual feelings or more importantly rights, is a distinguishing factor in this day and age because of the foundations of what so much of our civilization is based on. We see a horse, as Alice Walker’s visitor did for example and associate it with the idea of happiness and freedom, without ever questioning if the horse itself is actually content with it’s life.   If we were to separate the two entities, unlike nature, animals are very much a part of our everyday lives. First and foremost we see them in our grocery stores. In our supermarkets, their unborn children (eggs) or their legs and thighs, directly under a sign stating ‘free range’ or ‘grass fed’ to help us sleep better at night.

To convince us, as Alice Walker explained, that animals actually “enjoyed” being fattened up for slaughter or encouraged to lay eggs so they can be taken away from them. In chapter six of Communicating Nature, Corbett goes through a list of terms that are most commonly used to connect advertisements to the natural world. Many times animals are introduced into this when the need for some sort of link between non-saleable qualities and material goods presents itself. The term most closely related to this is “nature-as- backdrop”.  “The nature-as” backdrop tactic doesn’t necessarily want the consumer to buy something in direct relation to the environment, but link the personality or cultural meaning of a specific animal back to the product: jaguar to represent a fast car or a gorilla to represent something with a strong hold such as glue. This I feel is where the largest disconnect happens because the animals are now solely images, vague ideas of what they are and what they represent but nothing beyond that.

           

Those who do indeed venture out to find some sort of connection with animals other than your average house pet are given a lot of respect because many times it means leaving the comfort of your home. Because the sole idea of it is so praised, the way many go about it becomes irrelevant. As Linda Hogan details her experiences during her time spent at a region called the Boundary Waters in Deify the Wolf, she explains that everyone in her group was there for a different reason.  “A California woman thinks seeing the wolves will be like in the movies.” Another man is a trapper who makes $1,500 a year trapping fur animals and says he’ll hunt and traps, long as women wear fur coats.” she writes.  We praise them for taking the initiative to place themselves in the cold of the North Country, but the reasoning still remains completely anthropocentric. Placing both groups in close proximity to one another throughout her writing and therefore encouraging the reader to compare, Hogan then goes on to speak about a group of wildlife ecologists.  She writes that the locals refer to them as ‘environmentalists’ and complain that their main reason for being there is to “Deify the Wolf.” These wildlife ecologists were placed there to do research on the wolf population. Hogan makes the irony of the situation clear as she then states that main reason behind such a drastic decline in wolf population is human interaction. So although the intentions might be good, such as in the case of Hogan’s specific story of just wanting to see an animal which she believes reflects back what we hate and love about ourselves as a humans, many times it creates a destructive medium of which is almost always made to benefit human kind.

           

While Hogan believes it is the wolf that humans share many characteristics with, many are convinced that it is dolphins. As detailed in the documentary The Cove dolphins have scientifically been proven to be one of the most intellectual species aside from humans. So it isn’t as if humans aren’t aware that these species can feel, communicate, and use logic just like we do, but rather taking that into consideration would cause us to have to reconsider the destructive actions we take towards them on unprecedented scales. The Cove details very clearly the intelligence dolphins have both of themselves and their environment, and then details very clearly how we deliberately choose to use either ignore this intelligence or use it to our benefit. An article on grist.com focuses on the million on dolphins that could be hurt as, you guessed it, the oil industry blasts along the east coast. “The seismic tests involve vessels towing an array of air guns that blast compressed air underwater, sending intense sound waves to the bottom of the ocean. The booms are repeated every 10 seconds or so for days or weeks.” the McClatchy news service states. Compassion, a characteristic that many argue makes us human would mean to imagine what it would mean for our fellow species to endure that, therefore not allow it to happen to anyone else.