Limited Enlightenment

This is my final blog post for my Animal Planet class. One might think after being exposed to all of the horrific ways that humans exploit animals, I would be depressed. Rather, it's the contrary. On the last day of class, one of my classmates stated that learning all of this information makes her feel more complete. As horrible and saddening as parts of what goes on in the world are, it makes us feel enlightened. As I told my boyfriend of this thought, he reminded me of the most fundamental reading of an integrated social science and humanities class we took in high school: Allegory of the Cave.

In Plato's "Allegory of the Cave", humans are chained inside of a cave, damned to look at a wall dancing with shadows cast from the light of the real world. The humans witness second hand what is happening because they can only see the shadows, they can't see what is actually happening. One of the humans is able to break free from the chains holding him captive. He ventures to the outside world and is blinded by the intense light. As he adjusts to the brightness of the outside, he sees what is actually happening rather than the shadows of the truth. He no longer is condemned to only see parts of the whole - he can now learn and engage with the world.

I feel like I have broken free from the chains and stepped out of the cave. I have been exposed to so much in this Animal Planet class that at times it has been overwhelming, just like the blinding light. It was difficult to adjust my eyes at first, since I had not been exposed to this type of material before. Luckily, I had already been exposed to interdisciplinary thinking in the class I mentioned earlier, otherwise the light would have been so much brighter. But as far as the issues surrounding the treatment of animals and the role that they play in our society, I was definitely enlightened. Not enlightened in that everything I learned was perfect and I now know the truth. Not at all. What I learned was that everything can be looked at in a different light - a positive light, a negative light, a neutral light, and all of the lights in between, spanning the full spectrum.

A certain thought has occurred to me over and over again while journeying through this class: What if we saw everything, every aspect of the world, through the lens of an advocate? What if we saw the good and the bad through a supportive paradigm? Wouldn't we see people in a different light, animals in a different light, ideas in a different light? What if the blinding light that the ex cave dwellers experienced was shown in different colors? This reminds me of a current topic I'm studying for my chemistry final...wavelengths and light (I knew I would be able to relate chemistry somehow).

Take one particular event. They exit the cave and see the word ANIMALS like it's on a billboard or a movie title up in lights. Then all at once the light blinds them - but this time it's not white light as a whole, but all the colors that make up the white light. It's red and orange and blue and green. Every wavelength, every different color is an argument - an argument in favor of some issue, however abstract, relating to animals. They see a light advocating for slaughterhouses, people have to eat somehow - and simultaneously see the opposite light advocating for veganism. They see the light advocating for pet ownership and immediately see the light advocating for euthanasia and also the light advocating for no animal companionship.

One may think the problem with this is that there's always an opposite, someone opposing the advocate. That's not the problem, that's the beauty. If you are only exposed to an issue through the lens of an advocate, chances are you may be more likely to support that side. If you simultaneously, or even afterward, see that same issue through the lens of someone advocating for the opposite, your alliances may change. Eventually, after seeing everything, every side of an issue, through the lens of an advocate, you can see the full complexity of the world.

In this class, I felt as thought I have not only seen the issues surrounding animals through the lens of an advocate, but also the antithesis. We have read a variety of pieces. However, it's just the beginning. There's so much left to learn, and I will never be done - not just regarding animals but everything else as well.

But what happens when I want to return to my original dwelling, to reenter my former abode still occupied by the chained humans that have only seen the shadows of what I have seen? In the "Allegory of the Cave", the "enlightened" experiences severe resistance to the knowledge and wisdom. After all, the chained up humans don't know any better. They can't imagine the outside world - like trying to imagine life on land if you've only ever known the sea. It's only possible if you go there and directly experience it, if you go there and are blinded by the spectrum of wavelengths that make up the continuous white light.

Furthermore, why would I ever want to return after being exposed to such a broad range of ideas, those different lights, that make up this thing I now call knowledge? Because we must recognize, I must recognize, that the whole of my life will consist of me stepping out of the cave time and time again. I am human, flawed and incomplete and have an infinite amount left to learn and experience. I will never harness all of the knowledge in the world.

Finally, knowledge does not make me any better than my comrades still dwelling in the cave. They all have the potential to step outside. Maybe some of them in my life already have. It's my obligation to encourage them to do so in a humble and understanding manner. It is my obligation to recognize the limitations of my knowledge, but to share what I do know with others, looking forward to the day that I will not be alone when I venture out of the cave and ultimately to the day when the cave no longer exists.

Moderation

My dad used to own a small toy store in Pioneer Square. I spent a large chunk of my early childhood years in the store - playing with the toys, reading the mind puzzle books, riding the pig rocking horse. One fun little toy I was always fascinated by was this pendulum toy. It looked somewhat like this graphic displayed on science blog:

You can pick up one of the balls on the end, or multiple balls, and drop them and they will bang into the other balls and make them swing to the other side. Many times I think of heated topics and controversial issues like pendulums. It is so easy to be hit by something - information, experiences, conversations, etc. - and be swayed to the other side, especially if you don't have much prior knowledge regarding the topic of interest.

So often there is the notion of black and white, left and right, good and bad. The stark contrasts are seen in politics, economics, religion, social issues, animal welfare, health and more. Are you a republican or a democrat? Do you support welfare/unemployment benefits or not? Are you religious or atheist? Do you support gay marriage? Are you vegan or an avid meat eater? Are you a health nut or fat?

I think that it's human nature to want to identify yourself with one side or the other because you are then provided with a support system, a group of people that you have something in common with. However, we must realize this tendency to categorize because it leads to blindness. When we categorize ourselves on one side or the other, we run the risk of not seeing an important issue the other side brings up or dismissing the other side's idea that could be brilliant. Also, I have found from personal experience, that it is very easy to be on one side your whole life and get tired of it and go whole-heartedly to the other just for a change and because of the excitement of new ideas.

I identify with the swinging pendulum because eventually, the swinging stops. The balls stop right in the middle where they started, but have the experience of being on both sides.

My mom has been preaching the concept of moderation to me for ever but I'm just now beginning to realize what she means. There are three areas of my life where I am noticing the pendulum reaching that equilibrium, that moderation.

The first area is in political views - both fiscally and socially. I took a political alignment test at the beginning of my senior year of high school. I scored pretty far on the conservative side. After being exposed to so many fiscal and social issues in my social justice based class, I swung pretty darn far to the left. However, I'm now realizing that I don't want to identify myself with either side because I disagree with parts of both! I would consider myself a moderate - not in that I don't care about the issues, but rather because I have a better understanding of both sides and agree and disagree with different parts.

The second area is in health. At the beginning of high school, I felt very fat. Due to extreme exercising and freaky health eating, I lost a ton of weight. I was about the same size for a couple years while I played volleyball. Looking back now, I considered myself to be obsessive. After volleyball ended senior year, I wasn't quite as health conscious. In fact, I swung kind of far to the "what I eat and how much I exercise really doesn't matter" side. That didn't last too long, because it's not my nature to be unhealthy and inactive. But the mental aspect was there - that I was free from any chains that had previously kept me enslaved to my weight and body image and I could do whatever I wanted. I've been extreme and obsessed over my health, and I've also resigned myself to not caring. Where I'm at now is a wonderful place. I'm passionate about health and care about my body tremendously, but I also realize that caring about my body means that I do things in moderation. Both sides to the extreme are incredibly detrimental to overall health.

The last and most recent area relates to animals. Before this class, I was so against being vegetarian I laugh about it now. I was one of the people that would respond to vegetarian related comments saying confidently, animals were created to be eaten, and it's a sin to abstain from that. With the amount of information I have been exposed to over the last ten weeks, I have often swung to the opposite end of the spectrum. At the beginning of the quarter, sometimes I would get out of class and not even want to eat food at all. I now realize that the issues surrounding eating animals are so much more complex than just being labelled a meat eater or a vegan. There's an infinite number of levels of moderation in between. Currently, I don't eat chicken, pig, cow, duck, etc. and don't really see myself changing in the future. However, I do occasionally eat fish. I've had a hard time justifying this to myself. Sometimes I am put into situations where eating fish is the best available option. I have an incredibly fast metabolism  and get hungry so easily, to the point of where I am debilitated if I don't get substantial food, and if there's no other source of protein in sight, I usually resort to fish. I'm still exploring that issue because I know that it is just as multi-faceted as the other issues of meat eating. Additionally, I'm not a vegan. I can't explain why other than the fact that for me at this point in my life, it doesn't feel right. I don't know why, it's just my gut instinct. I can certainly cut down on my dairy products and eggs, which I do, but I don't see myself completely cutting them out of my diet.

What I'm noticing is that I'm a lot like the pendulum. I see both sides in many different lights, but I eventually end up somewhere in the middle. However, I do not mean that by ending up in the middle I am complacent whatsoever. By being in the middle, I mean that I am pretty moderate in my views and personal philosophies. That doesn't mean that I'm not still exploring all of the sides that make up an issue. Furthermore - there's not just two! Perhaps a more accurate analogy instead of a pendulum would be a circling tetherball. I am still in the process of exploring all of the sides of the world, and I continue to do that for the rest of my life. Also, it's very possible to be on one end of the spectrum and still understand both sides. Who know's where my ball will come to rest in the future - for I've only seen a small fraction of the world.

Intersections

At the beginning of the quarter, Professor Garcia emphasized intersections. She told us to be on the lookout for all of the intersections we would see during our time in her class and beyond. The focus of the class is on Animals. However, the ideas I have been exposed to in this class and the lessons that I have learned are applicable to everything beyond it.

Last class, we talked about how important it is to keep the animal in focus as we discuss different issues relating to animal welfare and animal politics, etc. It is so easy to get side tracked and forget that we are even talking about animals. As I pondered this idea today, I was struck by how applicable it is to everything else I am involved in at UW.

I have an internship with Ink Aleaga, an advisor in the Student Athlete Academic Services building called Conibear Shellhouse. I help him plan community service and outreach activities for the UW athletes. My official title is Campus & Community Engagement Assistant. Our two main projects I have been working on recently are Women in Sports Month which just finished up last week, and Football Education Month in May. For Women in Sports Month, I coordinated visits where athletes went to surrounding Seattle public schools and talked to the elementary aged kids about how to balance athletics and academics, how to live a healthy lifestyle, and what it's like to be a woman in athletics. For Football Education Month, we are planning a whole month worth of activities for the football players including similar visits to the schools, career building workshops, and an NFL motivational speaker. The kids absolutely loved the female athletes and the visits that they conducted at their school. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go, but am very satisfied with the outcome.

Ink and I meet for a total of about three hours every week. We discuss very technical aspects of planning the visits and what we think people will enjoy, what's too much money, how to fit in everyone's schedules - and what's so easy is to forget who I am working for. I am obviously working for Ink because he approves my paycheck, but ultimately I am working for people. I am working to improve the lives of others, however simple the action. I need to constantly remember to keep the athletes and the children being affected by the athletes in the center of my work.

At the beginning of this quarter, I joined a Core Group through the INN, a Christian worship center right by campus. My core group consists of five other girls my age and a leader who's about twenty-eight that also went to UW. We meet weekly for a couple hours to discuss how our week is going, what we've been up to, what we need to pray for, and then study a critical message either from the Bible or a Christian novel we have selected. All of our conversations every Monday night come back to one idea - keep God at the center of your life. This is much easier said than done, for it is very easy to forget that God is with us all the time and to thank him for all of the blessings in our lives.

Recently, we've been talking about the difference between following a religion and having a relationship with God. Those things can definitely go hand in hand, but sometimes they don't. It is very easy to get caught up in the politics and details surrounding religion. I always have to bring myself back to the center - God and love. God loves me, and I love him. It's that simple, but yet so complicated when our minds are led astray.

I'm also a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, a sorority in the Greek system. Lately I've been struggling with the fact that I don't have a huge amount of friends in my house. I like a lot of the girls - but I'm also very different from a lot of them. Sometimes I think how easy it would be to conform to fit the mold and be like everyone else (not that everyone is the same, but you get what I mean). However, I love who I am; I'm very content with being myself. I must strive to keep my values and my passions at the center of my activities and not change to conform to a mold that's not me.

In my Global Health 101 class, we talk about a multitude of issues, practically infinite amount, surrounding global health. There are so many factors to consider when learning and teaching and making decisions relating to global health - political, economical, educational, physical, logistical, social, moral, ethical, etc. I have come to find that global health is a broad term that is a synonym for "the world". As complicated as global health may be, we must remember that at the center of global health is health, and at the center of health are people. The people that are affected by global health in a broad sense are everyone.

As for my Chemistry class, I haven't quite figured out where the philosophical intersection lies...but I do know that I'll find it someday.

The common thread running through all of these different groups and clumps of knowledge is life. Animals, athletes, students, God, love, personal values, people all make up life. As I've demonstrated, it's so easy to be distracted and focus our attentions of everything else - and that's not necessarily bad all the time because everything needs some of our attention. But we can't forget that life is at the center of it all. In the end, all that I learn, teach, and experience should be in order to improve the lives of others and my own life. Life should be at the forefront of everything I do. If not, I run the risk of overlooking the most important gift that I could ever imagine: to live.

Love

Throughout the class, the idea of love towards animals has come up frequently. Recently, we've begun to discuss certain types of love. There is love for the long haul, being invested in someone or some being for a lifetime. This kind of love could be a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a friend, an animal, a child. The other kind is love in the moment, love for an instant. This kind of love could be saving a dog that's not yours from a burning building, picking up a neighbor from the airport, buying a stranger's meal at a restaurant when they realize they have forgotten their wallet.

But are those two kinds of love really much different from each other? As one of my classmates pointed out, is there a difference between a moment of love and a lifetime of love? Does love have a hierarchy?

Now obviously love for a lifetime indicates commitment - the lover has to be dedicated to loving the loved. Similarly though, one can be committed to committing loving and compassionate acts unconditionally, no matter the recipient.

Ultimately, love is a choice. We choose to love for an instant and we choose to love for a lifetime. As another classmate put it, love is not a finite resource. We can expand our love. In fact it is our obligation to expand our love. How we treat any being influences how we treat ourselves and all other beings (relating this to the last post about interconnectedness). Love is a practice. It must be exercised regularly just like any other skill/habit. When we choose love over and over, it becomes easier and more familiar.

Additionally, choosing love is the right thing to do, even if you can't see the end result. Sometimes projects that do not provide immediate results like health system strengthening and investing in a child and education are pushed aside for projects that do. It is if though more good will come from something if you are able to see it happen. False. Even if you can't see the result ever, choosing love is the right thing to do because it benefits others. I'm trying to think of an counterargument to that statement but I can't. I'm sure someone could debate that love does not one hundred percent of the time benefit others, but in general, Love Wins.

So no matter if we love every being for a moment, or one person for a lifetime, or one animal for their entire life, love is a choice and it is the right one. The first law of thermodynamics states that the energy of the universe cannot be created nor destroyed, just like matter. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe is always increasing. Matter on Earth is not created nor destroyed, it is only changed, just like energy. However, love is like entropy. Love has the capacity to increase forever.

Life

Lately I've been pondering the question: why did God create animals? There's many ways to approach this question from a human standpoint. Scientifically, because we evolved from them. But then why create evolution? Is it that it reinforces that we are the most powerful because we are the only beings that have halted evolution?

Or is it for sentimental reasons, to be our companions? However, not all of them are companions. What makes an animal suitable for a companion?

Or could it be for food? However, God is all powerful and he could have created science and the world so that none of our food sources had life. The conclusion that I've come to with the help of my class is this:

Currently, in order for life to continue, life has to end. In order for beings to live, they must consume other living things - plants, animals, fungus, etc. Why does it have to be this way? A beautiful answer that we came to is that life doesn't end. When we eat food, any kind of food, it becomes a part of us. In a sense, the life is living through us. Not in the sense that I have the same spirit as a bacteria that lived a million years ago, but the sense that I am made of the same elements and the same matter. I believe that God creates new life all the time, but here on earth our physical bodies are all made of reused material. Thinking this way gives a wonderful sense of continuity. Death is seen as a tragic event, an ending. Looked at through the lens of continuity, death is a new beginning.

Furthermore, continuity spanning life and death fosters an interconnectedness of the world. We are literally made of particles that belonged to living beings since the beginning of life on Earth. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, only changed. Perhaps this scientific law holds more truth than previously thought.

Now if we do believe that all life is connected, might we treat life differently? How will we treat the most vulnerable members of the population - the poor, the disabled, children, animals...? When all life is connected, that connects everyone to the world in a more intimate way.

My beloved grandmother died when I was four. We had an amazing relationship, and I still think about her frequently. My brother was born a couple of weeks later. They are two of the most caring and loving people that have ever been a part of my life. They are also two of the most important people in my moms life. What kind of beautiful gift from God is that - that when one precious life ends that another one begins? I don't believe in reincarnation, but I do believe in the continuity of life. Life inspires, life loves, and life never ends.

So the larger point that I'm trying to make is that although life may be tough sometimes and it is easy to hate another life or take another life for granted, all life is connected. I am connected to you, and you're connected to me in more ways than we can imagine. That is one of God's most precious gifts to us.

Fear

I identify myself as a "freaker". I am irrationally afraid of many things - murderers, balconies, terror, knives, fire, earthquakes, sudden changes, spiders, the list goes on. I think that there is a "freaker", although to maybe a smaller degree, in everyone. The media plays off of this freaker attitude by fear mongering. In movies, television, radio, magazines and more, fear sells. One of the main reasons fear sells, especially when the feared are living, breathing beings, is because people love to rally against something to hate.

It is pretty evident to me that love is a pillar of society. I experience it every day. But how much do we experience hatred every day? How much do we experience that we don't recognize?

We read an article in Animal Planet about sharks and watched a video called Sharkwater. Historically, I'm not a huge fan of sharks, going so far as to not go past knee deep in the ocean in both Florida and Hawaii (even though I don't even know if sharks are there). How many of us have ever seen a shark in person?

Sharkwater portrays sharks in a much different light than Jaws does, or even Shark Week. The objective of Sharkwater is to show the public that sharks are much less aggressive and blood thirsty than we think they are, our thoughts and actions sculpted by portrayals in the media. Rob Stewart, the main person in Sharkwater told of how sharks actually fear humans as much if not more than we fear them. They can't even physically eat humans easily because of our body shape. But how many people know that?? I certainly didn't before watching this movie.

Immediately my mind jumped to terrorism. Media thrives off of demonizing sharks, the beasts of the sea. Media in America also thrives by instilling fear in the American population by demonizing and sensationalizing the terrorists in the Middle East. As I am learning more and more, I find that there are so many more sides to the issue of our involvement in the Middle East and our conceptions of Islam to which I have not been previously exposed. I won't get into these details now, but I want to point out the important parallels between the demonization of Islam and the demonization of Sharks.

Sharks have been known to eat people (not whole, but yes kill people). About five per year. Terrorists killed mass amounts of Americans in the 9/11 attacks. No one can justify either of these events. Now, sharks killing people unintentionally is much different than the intentional attacks of 9/11 that were meant to cause serious destruction, damage, sorrow, and terror. However, I want to focus on the aspect of beast making, (bear with me on the language here) of focusing all of the negative energy on one thing and ignoring the un-negativeness of other things associated with that thing.

I was disturbed and saddened by a tweet on Twitter I came across a couple days ago. A girl tweeted, "Islam midterm's reference site is iraqisthebomb.com #f*** (not actually starred out) #that #terrorist #shit." I was disappointed, especially since neither Iraq nor Iran nor Afghanistan were the source of the 9/11 attacks, but rather Al Qaeda. It's just those kind of ignorant comments that make me so frustrated with the negative media because they perpetuate them. The media has demonized not only the source of the attacks, which is arguably justified considering what they did, but more importantly - the whole Middle East. Being a bad, Western world hating person is not a criteria for living in the Middle East. They are people just like you and I. Yet the fear that has been instilled in us causes that tension, causes that push to jump to conclusions. I would venture to say that the percentage of the American population that knows to the best of their abilities with readily available information a detailed history of our involvement with the various countries in the Middle East is very small. I certainly don't.

Sharks are in no way on the same level as terrorists, but the idea of fear mongering is applicable to both and many other aspects of life. I certainly don't hold all of the knowledge of the world. I don't expect anyone else to. However, it's time to hold humanity as a whole, hold each other, to a higher standard. When we are judgmental, malicious, and ignorant we are hurting others and ultimately ourselves. We must be careful with our words and analyze how our limited knowledge shapes our different paradigms through which we see the world.

Numbers

Lately I've been wondering if me eating less meat has any affect on anything at all. So I decided to do some calculations...

The average American person eats .5 pounds of meat per day. That's a decent amount of meat - 8 oz. I guess you figure that a 4 oz. piece of meat for two meals a day would equal 8 oz. Using that number, if I abstain from eating meat for a year, I would save 180 pounds of meat.

I want to have kids around the age of 25, and I think that's pretty doable. Right now I'm almost 19. If I eat a meatless diet for the next six years, I will have saved 1,080 pounds of meat.

Once I have kids, I'm most likely going to be cooking the majority of the meals (with possible help from my husband). If I cook the meals, meatless meals, for the entire time that my children are in my house - say I have two kids four years apart (about the average number of children for American families) and a husband for a grand total of four people in my family - I would save 15,840 pounds of meat in those 22 years. Granted, my kids could eat meals in other places, and maybe my husband has meat here and there - but I'm trying to have the best possible scenario. Also, maybe my kids don't eat as much when they're younger, but most certainly may make up for it in their adolescent years.

By that time, I'm 43 years old and have saved 16,920 pounds of meat. My kids are out of the house and making their own decisions. But maybe I have convinced them to be vegetarian - or at least influenced the amount of meat that they want to eat. Say they eat half as much as a normal person, .25 pounds of meat per day, taking into consideration what I have taught them for the past 22 years about our current meat industry. By the time they have potentially have kids, they have saved another 630 pounds of meat each if they have don't have kids for seven years after leaving the house, for a total of 1,260 pounds. Who knows how they raise their children. I'm assuming it would be with less meat...but I'll leave that out of the equation for clarity.

Fast forward 32 years to age 75. My husband now eats .25 pounds of meat a day instead of none because he really likes it. That's another 5,760 pounds I save by abstaining and 2,880 pounds he saves for a total of 8,640 pounds of meat.

I'm going to be optimistic and say I live to be 100, which is definitely possible with the rate at which modern medicine is advancing. Realistically, myself age 75 to 100 would not be eating .5 pounds of meat per day - probably more like .25. My husband's still eating .25 pounds. By abstaining from eating meat from age 75 to 100, I save 2,250 pounds of meat. My husband saves the same amount by having .25 instead of .5, just like he has been for the last few decades. In total that's 4,500 pounds of meat between us.

Add all those numbers up and in my lifetime, I have saved 31,320 pounds of meat.

With an average chicken, you can get about 2 pounds of meat. Cows provide an average of 585 pounds. Pigs give you 200 pounds. And cats I'm just going to estimate (since where would you easily find on the Internet how much edible meat a cat produces) - 8 pounds.

That's about:

15,660 chickens
53 cows
110 pigs
or

3,132 cats.

I include cats because I want to induce a squeamish reaction. If I tell you that in your lifetime you will eat 10,000 chickens, you may say okay, that seems high but I can see that. If I tell you that you will eat 3,132 cats - that's repulsive. I agree, it's repulsive. I would go out on a limb - literally as in even climbing a tree - to save one cat. Would I do that for one chicken? Something to think about.

But even if you don't care about the lives of animals, save your cats - if I abstain from eating meat for my whole life from this point forward and reasonably influence those around me, that's 15,660 chickens soaked in fecal soup and contaminated with E-coli that my family and I don't eat. That's 53 cows' feces that doesn't contaminate the environment - because yes industrialized cows produce toxic waste. That's 110 pigs that won't spread Zoonotic diseases, which are the cause of about 90% of all influenza.

So I come back to my original point...is being a vegetarian worth it? I didn't address in here occasional meals containing meat, which is very likely. Or the fact that maybe I'll eat fish. Or maybe my kids will go out to eat all the time because they don't like vegetarian food. Maybe my husband decides that he will eat a .5 pound breakfast sandwich every day from Starbucks with bacon and a beef patty, which is disgusting but maybe. There is an infinite amount of permutations of how much eat can be eaten and when. 31,320 pounds of meat is on the high side and is a rough estimate that could be majorly subject to change - especially if the meat industry changed its procedures and habits.

Even though that's a high number, looked at in relation to the amount of animals farmed industrially even per day it's miniscule. It is easy to become so overwhelmed with the amount of change you can't enact, and forget about the amount of change that you can. Change is like the domino effect which I hinted at earlier with the influences that I could have on my family. If we don't start anywhere, we don't start at all. Maybe my kids didn't eat meat for the rest of their lives and influenced a good number of people. Maybe enough people stop eating meat over time that the market has to respond to the consumer demand and the system has to change. Maybe not. All I know is that I don't want to throw my hands up in the air right now and by the time I'm 100 say that I haven't even made a conscious effort. If my eating habits only stop one cow from being brutally killed, one person from becoming infected with E-coli, or are as impactful that they stop a Zoonotic pandemic that originated from one pig, then I have succeeded.

Similarities

As humans, we gravitate towards living beings that are similar to ourselves. Of course, we also enjoy the presence of differences, but we feel comfortable and safe and understood when we find those beings with which we have things in common.

I believe my kitten is one of the most adorable creatures on the planet. He has gigantic ears, massive eyes, and a tiny little nose. In fact, I think he's cuter than my gorgeous German Shepherd, Lola. Why do I think that Charlie (little kitten) is so cute? Because he resembles a human baby. Humans are attracted to people and animals that resemble babies because of their nurturing instincts. Naturally, we want to care for our young, the young that we once were. Baby features trigger that fatherly and especially motherly response - to care for little versions of ourselves.

Now, I still think that Lola is a pretty awesome dog, and she's pretty as well. She has big brown eyes, pretty sleek hair, and she's usually happy. She's also very athletic and occasionally she can get agitated, though not normally aggressive. Why do I like her so much? Well, I think that she resembles myself. We are attracted to animals that have qualities that we would use to describe ourselves. I think that I have a very similar personality to my dog. As we discussed in class, one of the main reasons that people feel so compelled towards lions is because they are the kings of the jungles - they are big and powerful and rule over all - possibly reflecting some people's conceptions of self.

What about pigs and cows and chickens? I wouldn't necessarily look at them and call them cute, but I also wouldn't look at them and call them ugly. I also can't say I don't have anything in common with a cow, but I can't really name many things that I do. What about fish, like a trout or a halibut? My initial reaction is that I have zero things in common with either of them outside of the fact we all need oxygen to survive. But do I feel drawn to a goldfish? Maybe...it's small and vulnerable. My personal theory, and I know it is the same for some of the people in my class, is that we are more likely to kill and eat animals that are less like ourselves.

When it comes to humans, we are drawn towards people with which we have things in common. In our romantic relationships, generally we are attracted to people that are like ourselves. Jumping to a bit of Freudian theory, we try to find mates that most closely resemble our opposite sex parent. In our friendships, there's usually one or two things that bond us, that make us friends in the first place. People don't often go up to someone randomly walking on the sidewalk and ask if they want to be friends. Also, we love groups - work groups, church groups, sports groups, book groups, etc - which all have common threads.

I think that there are a couple of reasons that humans are drawn to similar humans - we feel that we understand them and can connect with them better since we have things in common.

There is a certain type of person that is usually a result on generic personality tests called "the connector". The connector is a person that remembers everyone they meet, is very outgoing, and is not slow about talking with and connecting with people even in a large group setting. They're the people that many people enjoy knowing because they make you feel special and known. My theory is that we all have at least a little part of us that wants to be those connectors - to be able to relate to all kinds of people. Since not all people can naturally be connectors, we try to be by finding people we think we can connect with because of our similarities. Being with people that resemble ourselves makes us feel comfortable, feel wanted, and understood. Humans are social creatures and we have an innate drive to want to connect with people - and the shyest of us do so by connecting with only the people that make us feel the safest, the ones with which we have the most in common.

Getting back to how this relates to animals - why do we scorn cannibalism? Why do most humans think that is one of the worst offenses? Why does it disgust us so much? Because it is the closest we can get to eating ourselves without physically chewing on our own arms. Why would it be impossible for me to kill my kitten and eat him? Because I think he's adorable - because he resembles myself as a human baby - vulnerable, large features, in need of motherly care. Why would it be impossible for me to kill my dog and eat her? Because she's like me in a lot of ways - as abstract as they may be. Why do I scorn the consumption of lion meat? Because I view lions as having human qualities - king like and powerful rulers (as culturally subjective those connotations may be). Why would it be a little bit easier for me to eat a cow? Eh, not as much in common, or so I think. What about a fish or shellfish? That's pretty easy for me to do - what in the world do I see that reflects myself in a shrimp?

I am, and I think it's safe to say that the majority of humans are, drawn to give life and protect those beings that look like us and possess our qualities (in our opinions - which can differ greatly from culture to culture and person to person), and more apt to disregard the lives of those that don't. Why? Because it goes back to humans' desire to connect, to be wanted, to be understood. I feel slightly more understood by my cat than I do by a rainbow trout. It's also a survival instinct - we want to be with other beings that make us feel safe, with beings that we can predict since we think we know more about them from having similarities. Why would we want to take life away from something that makes us feel validated and protected?

Is this a good phenomenon? Not necessarily. Is this theory a stretch? Maybe, however I think that it's worth thinking about. What if there was an undiscovered breed of chicken that looked a lot more like swans? Would we eat them? What if there was a fish in the oceans the size of shrimp that looked like little dolphins? Would we eat them...? Say the world ran out of all forms of industrialized food to date - what would we eat first? The "cute" and "powerful" animals - or the weak and not as cute ones?

Influence

I want to work for a Non-Governmental Organization.

In class today we analyzed the non-profit, Heifer International. We scrutinized their website to see if they are a legitimate organization, looked up their allocation of funds data, and evaluated the language that they used on their website. Heifer International is like online shopping for charity. There is a page with tons of "things" that you can buy for people in need like clean water, cattle, goats, vegetable seeds, stoves, and even send a child to school. The can also be made in someone else's honor.

The organization looks legitimate enough to me, however I had a very strange sort of feel when I looked at the catalogue of items you can purchase. The catalogue appears on the screen like something you would see on Nordstrom.com. There are little teaser pictures showing what the item is with a title. When you click on the picture, it brings you to the item page with a bigger picture and a short description of the item.

More prominent than the feeling of shopping online, I felt like I was playing Neopets or the Sims. I felt, just like playing Neopets, like I was in control of this little world somewhere far away - that these little boxes of items I could purchase with my set amount of money was like a game. Now, I don't have any idea as to how I would set up the Heifer International catalogue differently, but I think that discussing this reaction and feeling that I had is important.

Neopets Shop Inventory for the Pharmacy in Neopia Central

Heifer International Gift Catalogue

The sentiment that I had slightly reflects a bit of control. The intentions of this organization are undeniably excellent. It would be very hard to argue that this organization was founded to be a detriment to people in developing countries. However, I also think that the ideas of this organization can be analyzed through a paradigm critiquing imperialism. Historically, Western ideas have shaped lots of the world. Heifer's catalogue reflects bits of imperialism in my mind. It is Western cultures imposing our control on other people. It felt to me like I was the designer of a developing country - I could choose what was most important to spend money on, where the improvements were most needed, etc - as if I know that with my limited experience.

In Global Health 101, we talk a lot about NGO's - non-governmental organizations. When I thought of an NGO before taking this class, I thought that they were perfect. After learning about the complexity of NGOs, I am more informed and have seen that they are not perfect and can have failures, even with the best of intentions. In Global Health we watched a TED Talk called "What happens when an NGO fails?". The talk showed how an NGO went to a country in Africa and built a water well system to provide clean water for the community. A few years later, they went back to assess how the wells had been performing. To their surprise, all of the wells had malfunctioned within one year and none were still working, the community now burdened with a bunch of large, non functioning metal apparatuses. Even more shocking was that they found out another NGO had done the same exact thing ten years ago, only to have the same outcome - and the non functioning apparatuses were still there in the community. The water pump systems failed because the NGOs that put them in place didn't schedule maintenance for the pumps.

What failures occur when these gifts from the Heifer catalogue reach their destination? Someone in class today asked, what if there are no male cows in a community to impregnate a cow, necessary in order to obtain its milk? What if the animal sent to a community is not suited for the particular climate? Someone found that in fine print Heifer said that they would always pick animals suited for the area, if possible. That "if possible" clause could mean that the gift is beneficial or detrimental to a family.

Now, I am not against NGOs or Heifer or charitable organizations or non profits by any means. I think that they almost always have good intentions - why else would people in these organizations get into that line of work in the first place? There are far more profitable professions. As I said before, my dream job is to work for an NGO. My intentions are to do good. However, I think it is extremely crucial to complicate matters as I have discussed in my previous two posts.

Heifer International has brilliant intentions, and I think that their way of presenting their catalogue increases consumer participation. I think that NGOs have done amazing work and will continue to do so, and they will get better and better, learning from past failures as discussed in the NGO failure TED Talk. When I work for an NGO and possibly do work overseas, I will be working for the betterment of the population I'm serving, not for my own benefit.

Just like it is important for NGOs to complicate their missions and make sure they learn from previous failures, organizations like Heifer should complicate their gifts. Now, I don't know the internal structure of Heifer International, so maybe they do just that. But as a consumer, as a member of the public that donates and works for the betterment of people, I must ask these questions when I look at that catalogue, instead of acting like I'm shopping at Nordstrom.com or controlling a game-like far away land like Neopia. If I don't, I run the risk of blindly following something that could potentially have negative side effects. I must ask questions like, how does my gifting of catalogued items in some ways induce sentiments of control? In what ways don't they? How do they improve the lives of the recipients? What is included in the gift, and maybe what crucial part is missing? In "Simplicity" I mentioned that I want to complicate the world to better understand it. Furthermore, I want to complicate the world to better serve it.

Choices

Before I came to the University of Washington, I was told that I would be enveloped by the party scene, my relationship would end immediately, I would never want to go back home, I would never talk to my professors in person, I would become less religious, I would gain fifteen to twenty pounds, and I would become a full blown sorority girl - I would completely change.  Well, it's almost the end of my second quarter and none of those have occurred.  I have not changed; rather I have grown significantly.  Things are definitely different than they were last year, but I have chosen the way in which they affect my life.

I don't like to go to parties much, they get really old.  My boyfriend lives across the street and we are doing just fine and are very happy.  I leave the Greek System with him almost every weekend and trek over to the Eastside to go home and visit our families and all of the people that love us.  Not a single one of my classes has been taught by a TA - I even went to my professor's book release last week.  I have been going to various Christian and Catholic worship places on campus and have joined a Bible study.  I make time to exercise almost every day.  My sorority provides me with friendships, a place to live, food, a comfortable home, and fun events...however I would never describe myself, nor would anyone else, as a "sorority girl".

The interesting thing is - all of those occurrences which I described above could have happened.  They didn't because of the choices I made.  I had a plethora of information presented to me before I attended UW, and many choices, good and bad, presented to me upon arrival.  I chose to value health, love, friendships, academics, relationships, family, and loyalty.

Life comes down to choices.  No one can make you do anything.  I have definitely grown since the beginning of school, but I have made the choice to stay true to myself and to be the person that I want to be.

In Animal Planet, I have been presented with a LOT of information.  At first, I thought that I had to become vegetarian because I was taking the class and because everyone else was also.  So I did, and have not eaten any meat since the beginning of the quarter with the exception of a tuna sandwich, a sushi dinner, and a few morsels of pork I couldn't fish out in my mom's homemade pork fried rice.  I have found it relatively easy to be vegetarian for the most part.  I actually kind of like it - meat doesn't even really taste good anymore (I felt pretty sick after I ate sushi).

However, it is hard for me to abstain from consuming meat altogether.  When I ate the tunafish sandwich, it was because my boyfriend's mom made me one for lunch.  When I had a sushi dinner, it was because my friend came into town from California and one of her top priorities was going to sushi with me.  When I ate a bit of pork, it was because it would have taken me an extremely long time to separate the tiny slivers of pork from the sticky fried rice.

Are these acts selfish?  Is it selfish that I sometimes put convenience over vegetarianism?  I think one could argue yes.  But I see my own personal vegetarianism as moderation.  It's a personal choice - I am making an effort to eat significantly less meat.  If I slip up sometimes, I don't see that as a particularly awful action.  The main point for me is that I am making a conscious effort to lower my meat intake for animal welfare, economic, environmental and health reasons.

I have been presented with all of this information regarding eating animals from an interdisciplinary lens.  I am also surrounded by a culture that rewards eating meat, that centers around eating meat.  It is my job to make a choice.  No one can make me do anything.  Where I am at in my life right now, I choose vegetarianism in moderation.  I believe that that choice stays true to who I am.  I care a lot about animals and the environment and my health and the health of others.  But occasionally, I choose to give other things a temporarily higher value like convenience, social comfort, and time because sometimes they mean more to me personally in a particular circumstance.  I hope that doesn't mean that I'm a horrible person.

I am going to be exposed to a lot in my lifetime - a lot of people, a lot of opportunities, a lot of ideas - and it is my job to decide, to choose, how they will impact my life and furthermore how I will use them to impact the lives of others.  I'm happy with what I've done so far.

Simplicity

On Friday, everyone in class gave presentations on industrial agriculture in various countries - Ethiopia, Brazil, the US, India, and China. I began to think about one thing over and over again. Simplification. We do this all the time. When we talk about a country, we refer to its culture as ubiquitous. "Chinese people do this", "People from Brazil like to eat this". It's a very easy thing to do, and can be very informative. However, I think that there can be some danger in over simplifying a society.

Stereotypes of Americans include that they love fast food and are glamorous and are sexually promiscuous. None of those are true for me...or most of the people that I know. Sure it can be true for some people. How much of what we know about other countries is what we have heard from others as overarching themes of the country's culture? How much of what we know about other countries is actually us having been there or talked to a significant amount of people from that country. Wouldn't someone talking to me get a much different impression of Americanism than talking to someone from Wisconsin or from Alabama or from California?

When we talk about a group, a culture, a country, it is so easy to label them ubiquitously. That's not necessarily a bad thing - we can't possibly have direct experience with every aspect of every group. Labeling helps us learn and grow and distinguish one thing from another. However, cultures and religions and countries and PEOPLE are so much more complex. I think that we need to remember that. Labeling a group of people without recognizing that there is so much more depth can be destructive.

For example, in my presentation I talked about Structural Adjustment Programs. SAPs were put in place by the IMF and the World Bank to reschedule the debt in African and South American countries. Conditionalities were imposed on these countries including severe austerity measures, privatization of business and market liberalization. The problem was that not all of the countries these programs were imposed on were the same. They were very different countries with very different economies and needs and regulations. But labeling all of them as third world developing nations that desperately need help is so dangerous. These programs had very poor outcomes that created long term destruction in many of the countries.

Learning about the complexity of cultures and countries and people makes me want to learn and to travel. I want to directly experience the world and want to learn for the rest of my life. I want to complicate the world so as to better understand it.

Difference

Today I want to focus my post on a question that Professor Garcia posed in class:

When do we embrace difference as the standard, and when do we mark it as difference?

This question fascinates me. All humans are different - that is the standard. It is impossible to have someone exactly like you, even if you are twins, because you have had slightly different experiences. Humans embrace those differences. We rejoice in our individuality because it makes us who we are.

Contrarily, we historically have also scorned difference. Wars are all about difference - difference about ideas, culture, identities, traditions, etc. I would argue that genocides are the main example of scorning difference. Jewish people during the Holocaust were killed because they were different - they were Jewish. Tutsis and Hutus committed mass slaughter towards one another in the Rwandan Genocide - the root of the problem is that they are different.

As humans we have this paradox of difference - differences are what compose our identity, and they are also what cause us to hate or scorn the identity of another being.

So when is difference embraced and when is it not?

When I think of this question, I think of immigration. The United States is a country of immigrants - that is the nature of our country. Today, there are so many negative connotations with immigration in which people label the immigrants as "different" in a bad way. I do not want to over-simplify the issue of immigration because it is incredibly complex, but I want to focus on the idea of immigrants being different. Our differences in the United States are embraced because they make us who we are. The US is a melting pot - that connotes difference in its definition. Yet some are so resistant to accepting people of other ethnicities into our melting pot.

What is the big deal with difference? Why are people scared of it and why does it make some people uncomfortable? Why do we persecute people with difference?

I believe that it comes down to power. If a group can band together because they have similarities - i.e. live in the same area, practice the same religion, work in the same business, have the same gender - they automatically have power because there is inherently power in numbers. When there is an outsider, someone that is different, someone that is unknown, that inspires fear in the group. There is always fear in the unknown. Therefore, that group of people with various similarities bands together to have some kind of control over the unknown, the being that is different, in order to ease those fears.

Regarding animals, I believe that we all have a certain amount of fear of animals because there is always a little bit of unknown. We never fully know what they are thinking, what they are going to do next - there is no way to get around it, animals ARE different than us. But we are also different from each other. We exercise an enormous amount of power over animals, probably more than we should. I think that we do that because we are always slightly afraid.

And isn't that how humans have historically acted towards each other as well? When someone is different, we are naturally slightly afraid and uncomfortable at first. However, the fact still remains - we are ALL different.

So where do we draw the line? When do we stop exercising power over smaller groups of beings that are different? The majority usually (with some exceptions) rules. I think that the way that we treat difference is inherent in humans - it is a survival mechanism. If we want to survive, we will be cautious around difference. Therefore the way that we go about being cautious around difference has got to change. Instead of controlling difference and exploiting difference, learn from difference. For we are all different - explore the question of why are we different? What can we learn from each other?

Complexity

As a class we have definitely concluded that there is a lot wrong with the way that our food is produced. It is evident that industrial agriculture, specifically factory farming, is harmful in a multitude of ways. Factory farming violates the rights of animals and their well being, violates the rights of the laborers, irrevocably damages ecosystems and the environment, and violates the rights of the consumer - their right to know where their food is coming from and to be provided with the necessary information and resources to supply themselves and their family with healthy food.

Industrial agriculture is incredibly complex. There are so many people, animals, cultures, laws, rights, companies, ideologies, motives, benefits, costs, etc. intertwined in the web of industrial agriculture. If we want the system to change, where do we start?

Do we target emotion and evoke anger and sadness in the population by very publicly exposing the horrors of factory farms? Do we target human rights activists by stating that human lives are being exploited and degraded? Do we target religious groups and argue that the way animals are currently being treated would be scorned by the various gods, going against often universal teachings of love and compassion? Do we target the corporate heads by presenting a logical chart of the costs and benefits of changing to a more sustainable way of production? Do we target EPA by explaining just how detrimental industrial agriculture is to our environment? Do we target the family next door with a new baby by informing them of Kevin's Law, enacted on behalf of Kevin, a boy who died days after consuming E-Coli infected meat?

Which of these target populations hold the most potential for change? What strategy will enact the most rapid change?

In class today we talked about the two most prominent targets - the industry and the consumer. Is it more effective to try and bring down the industry, or is it more effective to bring up the small farmer? Both work for the same ends, just different means. In my opinion, it would be a combination of both. In an ideal world, one would bring the good up, and bring the bad down simultaneously.

But if there were limited resources and we had to pick one - which would bring about the most change? Today, a vegetarian classmate shared with us an experience she had over the weekend. She went to a Farmer's Market to get her groceries and contemplated buying meat. She does not normally eat meat, but she suddenly had an ethical dilemma: would it be more effective in changing the current system of industrial agriculture to abstain from eating meat altogether ("bring down" the bad - the demand for meat) or to support locally and "ethically" raised meat ("bring up" the good)?

This for me raised another question - is anything truly and completely ethical? Is it possible to raise an animal for human consumption and treat it with unwavering love and compassion?

I have a cow named after me in one of the states in the Midwest. My aunt's best friend's son owns a small dairy farm. When I was little, they asked me if I wanted to name one of their cows. Naturally I picked my own name and named it Marly. They sent me a picture of Marly with her little name tag on in one of the stalls in the barn. Marly is and has been for the last decade or so, the best milk and baby producer on the farm. I even got to name one of her children - Madeline.

One year my aunt went to visit their farm. When she got there, she immediately noticed that one of the cow's intestines were hanging out of her rectum. She asked her friend what was wrong with the cow. Apparently, she answered, that is fairly common with cows. Then my aunt asked he same question to the son, who told her that vet visits for something as common, but yet so painful for the cow, are too expensive - maybe he would call someone out to look at it later that week.

If someone is trying to support ethically raised dairy cows, and they buy milk from a farmer that gives cows a decent life, but doesn't have the means to always give them veterinary attention, instead of buying from an industrial dairy corporation that commits atrocities against cows every day, does it count? If there is one, two, three, ten violations of animal rights on an "ethical" farm, is it no longer ethical? Should we no longer support it?

Professor Garcia told us a story that Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Eating Animals, recounted when he came to UW. He is a vegetarian, but he told someone that he occasionally eats meat - maybe once a year. They immediately condemned him for being a hypocrite saying that if he eats meat even once a year, he can't call himself a vegetarian, and why not eat meat every day of the year at that point. He responded with, "if I tell a lie, however small, one day of the year, does that mean I should therefore tell a lie every day of the year"?

So often we think in terms of black and white, right and wrong. The reality is that things are so much more complex than that. Someone can be really good person, but they unavoidably will sin from time to time. A small "ethical" farm can occasionally make a bad decision, or assign economics a higher priority than a cow's comfort. Someone can oppose the meat industry and want to change it, but eat meat on occasion.

Where do we draw the line? Where does something cross over from good into bad, bad into good? I don't necessarily think that the line has to be drawn. Any progress is progress. Which is better - to buy the Farmer's Market meat or to not buy it? If I'm going to buy chicken, should I buy from a company that keeps them in a dark crammed coop 24 hours of the day rolling around in their own feces and chicken corpses, or one that keeps chickens in that coop 23 hours of the day, and lets them outside for one. ANY progress is progress.

That brings me back to my original question - where do we start? Well, as I have just said, any progress is progress. I would argue that it doesn't matter where we start. There are costs and benefits, some unforeseen, of all of the targeting measures that I mentioned in the third paragraph. If we preoccupy ourselves with being perfect, finding the absolute best possible solution, the most rapid solution, the most accurate solution to everything, we will get nowhere. The key is to look for ways to be progressive, to support progressive ideas. No matter how complex an issue, how many facets it has - visible and invisible - any progress towards a goal is progress towards a better future.

Agape

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Yesterday at Sunday mass, my priest recited this biblical passage. The topic of his homily was love. He distinguished between different kinds of love - in Greek there are four kinds. The kind of love in this passage is called agape. Agape is a completely selfless love, for the lover receives nothing in return. Agape is 100% benefitting the recipient. Agape is not a new concept to me, it was the theme of many concepts in my Catholic high school.

Last week in Animal Planet, we discussed the line between love and exploitation. Many of us love our pets; I don't know why you would get one if you didn't love animals. I am subservient to my animals the majority of the time because they are too sweet and adorable for me to be anything else. However, pet ownership brings up an ethical question that many of us don't want to face - do we exploit animals by claiming their ownership?

From a lifetime pet owner/lover standpoint, my immediate reaction is no. My pets have a pretty darn good life. My dog has multiple beds, a large back yard to run around in, delicious food, a warm house, and people that adore her. My two cats have a gigantic playground (my house) - nowhere is off limits, not even the kitchen counter/stove top. My cats are treated like princes. One night when one of my cats was extraordinarily hungry, we put a stool in between my mom and grandpa and a plate on the table so that he could eat with us as well. And let me not forget to mention, they are fawned over like new born babies - one of them isn't even a kitten, he's 12!

But is the act of ownership exploitation in even a small sense? Some could argue that a parent owns a child until age 18. Usually parents and pet owners provide the necessities for survival, give their child or pet attention, and make critical decisions for them in their best interests. The problem arises when we define "best interests". It is relatively easy to make a simple decision for a human baby - we were all human babies at one point and know basically what one needs/desires. But we were never animals. I was never a baby kitten, even though I rock mine to sleep as he purrs. I was never a dog, but I take her on walks and runs as she bolts ahead, trying to run faster with her tongue hanging out. I was never a cat, but I cuddle up next to him while he's sleeping to keep him company and provide more body heat.

Exploitation is defined as "use or utilization". I get pleasure out of rocking my baby kitten to sleep. I enjoy having a companion run with me when no one else will. I love sleeping with a fuzzy little heat radiator beside me. Am I exploiting my animals? Because they haven't specifically told me what they need/desire and because I haven't been a cat or a dog, I don't actually know for sure if they like being rocked to sleep, ran, or cuddled with. Sometimes when I hold my kitten he pushes away. Sometimes when I walk my dog she tries to turn around. Sometimes when I try to sleep next to my cat, he gets up and moves, irritatedly.

In class, someone brought up the idea of altruism - does it exist? Is there such thing as a completely selfless act? Does agape exist? If I enjoy doing things for my animals, and I "think" that it is in their best interest, is that selfless? Am I doing it for myself, or for my animals? The same question can be applied human to human - even if you know something is in someone's best interest, is performing a selfless act ever completely selfless? Don't we all gain happiness in knowing that we did something for another person? An extreme example of a selfless act is martyrdom. I find it hard to argue that martyrdom is not completely selfless. I've never been a martyr, so I can't really say much about that...

Furthermore, as someone asked in class, if everyone does gain happiness and satisfaction in knowing that their selfless acts benefitted another person, EVEN if it benefitted themselves by making them happier, is that necessarily bad?

After thinking about this question a lot, I have personally decided that the word selfless should be redefined. I don't think it matters if a person gains satisfaction or happiness by doing community service, a kind deed, or an unexpected act of compassion. A "selfless" act should mean an act that was done with the PRIMARY goal to benefit someone else. If an individual is happier after performing a selfless act, great. Isn't that the goal - to give and receive happiness and love, and agape? The world could use more of it! So yes, I believe that altruism does exist.

Regarding animals - is it possible to act in their best interest? Is it possible to show them unconditional love? We will never fully know what animals are thinking and what they want and what they need - but we can do our best. And if we gain something out of owning pets and making them our companions? I don't think that's a bad thing at all. Some may argue that humans have done animals a massive disservice by domesticating them in the first place. But now, there is an over abundance of domesticated animals. Domesticated animals are euthanized every day in shelters. Regardless if "owning" an animal and "using" him or her for companionship is unethical, I believe it is our duty to show the animals that we have claimed, and especially the ones that we haven't, love and compassion to the best of our abilities.

Unknown

I have a highly active and imaginative mind, and it has always been that way. I can't think of a time when my mind has been turned off (not even when I'm sleeping). I've spent a lot of time thinking, who is God? Now, that's a very open-ended question and can be interpreted in many ways. And that's the beauty of it - it can be interpreted in so many different ways.

Usually when I ask myself this question I go back and forth between two answers. In the first, I project human qualities onto Him. It seems accurate because He did create humans in His image. The second is that I find the first completely impossible and give up trying to answer the question altogether, because there really is no way to know.

When we think of animals, we tend to project our human qualities, our human emotions, our needs, our desires, onto them - just like I do when I think about God. But what if animals were so different from us, that we can't even fathom what goes on in their minds? Maybe we've got it all wrong. I'm not in any way comparing God's mystery with the mystery of animals, because that isn't on the same level with anything. However, it's a parallel that can be applied to many aspects of life.

Take the notion of stereotypes for example. When we see a person wearing a certain outfit, or carrying a significant item, or doing a certain activity, it is so easy to label them with a stereotype - to assign them an identity. Humans do this because we LOVE to compare what we don't know with what we do. And for good reason; that's the entire basis of scientific experimentation and theory and mathematics, and pretty much everything. This is how we find out information about the unknowns - by comparing and contrasting with what we do know.

By assigning a person an identity based on what they appear to be wearing, carrying, doing, etc. we can automatically deduce a number of facts about them (whether they are true or not). It is so easy, we've been doing it for our whole lives. The problem arises when we are wrong. When we assign a stereotype and someone breaks that - then how do we know what is right?

As I have seen in the videos and readings about animals' emotions, fantastic animal feats of survival or companionship, or animal-animal/animal-human relationships, animals have great potential to break their stereotypical mold.

Lots of people in my class raised the valid point that these cases are extreme, that a strange animal to animal cross species relationship is administered only under human care. Yes, it's also hard to believe that a chicken would respond to CPR. But the question that I raise is, how many of these extraordinary acts occur without being noticed? Yes, we have a whole lot of the animals in the world under surveillance, whether in a home, a farm, a slaughterhouse, a pet store, a circus, a zoo, a forest reserve, etc. - but there a also a whole lot that are not. How much goes on without us noticing? How much of animals have we over-looked?

Rather, not just what about animals have we over-looked, but what about animals have we over-looked by projecting our human characteristics onto them? How many people that we label with stereotypical identities break their mold drastically - enough to render that stereotype invalid? Maybe animals are more highly developed than we are but can't act on it because they don't have opposable thumbs (that is besides chimpanzees). Maybe these "unnatural" acts are just glimpses into the animal unknown - maybe it's enough to render our current understanding of animals invalid.

After many years of pondering, I don't feel the need to know everything about God. I believe that that's the way it should be. We as humans always want to find answers - we want to solve the problem, create something new, discover something undiscovered. What if we don't have to? What if we aren't meant to solve all of the problems, or uncover every single mystery. Is the unknown that awful? More relevant to animals - can we contently co-exist with the unknown?

Culture

The picture attached to this post was an item on the menu at a restaurant I ate at yesterday. Ironically, we had just talked in class about how advertising makes fun of animal that are made to be eaten. They show commercials such as Foster Farms Chicken and California Cows that glorify the life of a factory farmed animal. They portray these animals as stupid, happy, and eager to be eaten. If I was an animal, even with limited brain power, I don't think I would be the least bit eager to be eaten.

On a different note, the location of the restaurant provides more insight into why this pig was placed on the menu. Rarely would you be able to go into a restaurant and find menus with pictures of animals to illustrate what you will eat. This specific restaurant is a bar and grill in a rural city on the outskirts of the Seattle suburbs. Other pictures on the menu included a shadow of a buck's head with antlers taking up the entire background of both pages, and a cartoon bull jumping around.

When looked at in relation to its location, this menu's illustrations make sense. It is in a town full of farmers, many of whom have probably grown up raising their own livestock their entire lives. They may be comfortable recognizing that they are eating a pig as they look at the menu. Even though they are in close proximity, their culture is different than that of a young urban couple living in downtown Seattle that may have never even seen a cow in real life.

Culture within a city can vary. More obviously, culture across state borders and international borders vary quite a lot. Cultures' conceptions of food can be drastically different. For example, here in the United States, we do not eat cats...I adore my cat...but historically in some Asian countries, cats are used in some dishes. Many restaurants in the southern United States may not have a lot to offer when it comes to vegetarian selections, whereas in India, vegetarianism is an important aspect of some religious sects.

Everyone comes from a different place. Everyone has different childhoods, different experiences, different values, different cultural customs, and different beliefs. Cultures have disagreements with other cultures for these reasons - usually relating to religion, human rights, and land - which often result in wars and other catastrophes, still happening today.

Cultures have fatal disagreements all the time, without the treatment of animals involved. With all sorts of other issues in the way, will the treatment of animals ever be a global priority? Will there ever be a day when the whole world can see eye to eye on animal rights and/or welfare?

Dissociation

Since I've started taking this class, I've not been eating meat. I can't bring myself to do it knowing what I know now. However, I find it harder to make those meatless choices on Sundays and Mondays and Tuesdays. Why? Because my Animal Planet class meets on Wednesdays and Fridays. When I have long breaks of time away from the thought-provoking discussions revolving around eating animals, I catch myself thinking, why am I doing this? Why do I care about eating meat? Why should I change?

I blame this partially on my appetite, but mostly on language.

On Monday, I read Animal to Edible by Noelie Vialles. One of the topics of her novel was the dissociation between slaughter and butchery. The slaughterer is the actual person who does the killing - the butcher no longer does, rather he distributes the meat to the consumers. Directly and indirectly, Vialles mentioned quite a few other dissociations that have been made in terms of consuming animals.

In slaughterhouses, there is a dirty sector and a clean sector. The dirty sector is the entrance where the animals come in, the clean sector is where the meat comes out. In between there is a 'trap' where animals are caught in the middle of their life and death - between dirty and clean. One cannot simply go from the dirty sector to the clean sector. Slaughterhouses have ample rules and regulations to keep the dissociation of the dirty from clean in tact.

An animal goes into the slaughterhouse and meat comes out of it. However, while in its "making", the meat is fixed and adorned so that meat no longer resembles animal. The dissociation between animals and meat is a major reason that people continue to eat it. Every time I begin to tell people about the meal they are about to eat, I get the response, "I don't want to hear about it". Recognizing that their food is actually part of an animal, it's parts now distant and spread across the world, would spoil their dinner by bridging the dissociation. I would be shocked if I ever heard anyone say that they're craving animal rather than craving meat for dinner.

During this process of an animal becoming meat, the animal must be killed. However, 'administering of death' or 'killing' has taken on a new name: 'shedding of blood'. Before an animal's throat is slit and the blood is drained, the animal is stunned between the eyes in order to render it unconscious. Therefore, as Vialles put it, who actually does the killing - the stunner or the slitter? I would argue the throat slitter, but nonetheless, this process creates a kind of foggy confusion in which no one can be completely certain. Shedding of blood is no longer congruent with administering of death. They are conveniently dissociated.

All of these dissociations have one thing in common - they humanize something inhuman. From slaughter comes butchery. From dirty comes clean. From animal comes meat. From administering of death comes shedding of blood. By changing our language, we change the connotations that come with the meaning.

According to Vialles, killing of animals used to be a commonality in the streets, for all people to watch. Over time, society decided that they no longer wished to see their food be killed. The slaughtering was thus confined to slaughterhouses on the outskirts of town. This way, the people could completely dissociate their society from having anything to do with the killing of animals for food (or so they thought). They could HIDE the killings and all of the negativity that came with it.

Dissociation is a way of hiding, of concealing from view. We dissociate, as I have described, through language. In the first part of Animal to Edible, Vialles states that, "The development of vocabulary often provides a very clear indication of the way in which a society's eating habits evolved." Our vocabulary around food has developed in such a way that it hides the actual meaning - it is dissociated from the actual meaning. All of the inhumane words are made human and are not only tolerated, but accepted, by the majority of the population.

This brings me back to my original problem - why do I find it harder to stick to a vegetarian diet on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays - or rather on days that I am farther removed from the knowledge of what meat really is, and how it became meat? The language that our society uses to talk about meat and animals makes it easy to revert back to how I originally thought. It makes it easier for me to forget what I have learned because the language that we use today hides the truth. I am dissociated from the truth.

Relationships

Currently, I have two cats and one dog. My eldest cat is an all black shorthair named Rocco. My newest cat is white and grey long-hair kitten named Charlie. Rocco is now twelve. A couple years ago, when he was a solo cat, we decided to get a new kitten named Leo. Rocco, once lively and very active, became sedentary and grumpy the second we brought Leo home. About a year later, Leo got lost. Rocco couldn't have been happier - he was back to his normal self.

My mom is a huge cat person. In her childhood, she never had less than three cats at a time. It had been a while since Leo's passing, so naturally my family thought it was appropriate to consider getting a new kitten. My mom was so against this, we thought we'd never get another cat. The reason? Because she didn't want Rocco to feel like he wasn't of value to our family, or that we didn't love him anymore. She didn't want him to feel as though we had to keep replacing him. His obvious behavioral reactions when we got Leo and when Leo left was enough to convince my mom that he would be much worse off with a new kitten.

Well, I had contrary beliefs and thought that a new kitten would be a wonderful addition to our already wild household. After practically forcing this kitten onto my mom in PAWS, she accepted him - enthusiastically. This kitten has now become an integral part of our family. Charlie hangs out with all of our family members, he has a civil relationship with Rocco (the one who before was a huge grump around Leo, and who we now give an enormous amount of attention to to make sure he knows he is loved), and most amazingly, he has an intimate companionship with our German Shepherd, Lola.

There are three main points from this account of my family's animal related interactions that I want to address:

First, what if everyone took the feelings and the lives of animals into deep consideration like my mother. What if when designing slaughter houses, animals FEELINGS were thought about? What if the primary concern of a factory farmer was to make sure that the animals all FELT good? What if there was an entire section of industrial factory farming devoted to animals' MENTAL HEALTH?

Secondly, why do I fawn over Charlie and not a pig? I believe it's because of how I was raised. I didn't grow up around pigs. The majority of the country hasn't. Does that mean that a pig is any different than a cat? Sure they have different genetic make ups, behavioral patterns, and tendencies - but they are also so alike. We tend to spend so much time focusing on the differences of animals, the differences of humans - race, gender, sexual orientation, occupation, income level. By focusing on the differences, it makes it a lot easier to marginalize the different ones. Differences are certainly necessary, but we sometimes forget to acknowledge that we are the same in so many ways. We are all humans. We are ALL creatures that inhabit the Earth, us and animals alike. We are animals.

Lastly, and on a slightly different note, I want to talk about inter-species relationships. I believe that Lola and Charlie really love each other. They play with each other, cuddle with each other, and just hang out together. When Charlie is playing with a toy, Lola will wait until he isn't watching, snatches the toy, and trots off with it waiting for Charlie to come find her. I watched the documentary - "Animal Odd Couples" - and it related so well to the relationship of Charlie and Lola. As was stated in the documentary multiple times, animals are far more complex than we give them credit for. Sure, these behaviors are instinctual. But aren't we mostly instinctual beings as well?

I have always been in awe of animals, and I always will be. Yes, I believe that humans are dominant over animals - but I believe that the relationship is much more complex than that. I believe that animals and humans must learn from each other and explore each other without disregarding the others' rights. Instead of one species exploiting the other, I think it is time that society as a whole re-thinks our position of dominance, and begins to question for what the vital position that we hold in hierarchy of earthlings should be used.

Hope

Factory farming damages the environment, infringes on the rights of the workers, the consumers, and those that are consumed, and its ethical values, or lack thereof, are constantly coming into question. It has become clear to me from what I have been exposed to just in this first week of class that factory farming does much more harm than good, and is grossly inefficient.

The question has been asked - What will it take for society as a whole to change?

My boyfriend is a history buff and could probably tell you the details of any historical event that has occurred within the last few centuries. One day, he told me that there is a very clear pattern that is visible throughout history. A society has a set of values and traditions and ways of living. Eventually in that society, someone recognizes a need for change. They rally people together, however small the group, and eventually gain enough influence to overpower the existing notion, force, or group of people. Over time, the underdog wins if they are fighting to change a defective aspect of a certain society that is damaging, infringes on rights, or is ethically wrong.

We see countless examples of this occurring throughout history, even recently. Women's rights, LBGTQ rights, racial equality, child labor laws, health information available about tobacco, the emancipation of slaves (mentioned to me by a classmate) - even the revolutionary war - all came about because a smaller group of people that saw the need for a change, changed society.

Factory farming falls into this category as well. As hopeless as documentaries such as Earthlings and Food Inc. might make us feel, there IS hope. It may be hard to imagine, especially for me only having lived eighteen years. But if I ask my grandparents or other elderly relatives, society has constantly been changing. Sometimes it can seem to me as though society will continue exactly as how I see the world RIGHT NOW - that the world will be the same in ten, fifteen, even fifty years. This is not the case. Society will continue to be progressive, no matter how much the existing forces resist. History has proven it so.

As I offered this opinion to my class, one student mentioned that factory farming might not get as much attention and thus not fall into this category because of the influence and money that exist within the clutch of the corporations trying to protect it. However, the same could have been said about the tobacco industry which had a huge hand in the marketing industry, slavery that was perpetuated by people with large sums of money and power, or child labor that was implemented by corporations.

I believe that in order for the food industry to change - and here I'm not just talking about the meat industry, but also vegetables, fruit, grains, anything we eat, because it all to some extent can be unhealthily processed - it must hit on a personal level. Advocates must stress that many preventable diseases are caused by poor nutrition and/or badly processed foods. People must begin to notice that food can play a crucial role in the cycle of poverty. Most importantly, the connection needs to be made between animals and food - that what is being put on ones plate was once a living and breathing being, not just a piece of bacon.

All of these points of reason that advocate for a more ethical and sustainable food industry must hit home to the majority of the population to enact change. Luckily, people are already aware of these issues, and have gotten the ball rolling. As for now, we must do what we can to add to its momentum, and together look forward to the day when the ball reaches the finish line.

Earthlings

The definition of a serial killer according to Wikipedia is:

An individual whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...motives for serial murder include "anger, thrill, financial gain, and attention seeking"...victims may have had something in common; for example, occupation, race, appearance, sex, or age group...

Or in this case, species. I had never cried during any kind of movie in my entire life until I watched Earthlings. Maybe a tear or two during the Titanic (my favorite movie of all time) or during The Passion, which is even more emotionally gripping. However emotional the movies I have seen in the past may have been, nothing could compare to the sadness, pity, and shame that I felt as I sobbed watching Earthlings.

The movie explained in graphic detail how animals serve humans (willingly or not) on this earth. Companionship, food, clothes, entertainment, and science. All of what the movie outlined was hard to swallow, but one aspect was particularly difficult to watch - the theme of human superiority. It is obvious that in our society humans have more power than animals. As I explained in my last post, that is the way (in Christian beliefs) that God intended it to be. However, humans can sometimes act as though ignorance, arrogance, cruelty and disregard all go hand in hand with superiority - without taking into consideration the immense responsibility that comes with superiority.

Earthlings documented some pretty horrible actions by factory farm workers towards animals. Sure a worker must use a rod to guide an animal into a certain location - just to do their job. Some took it much farther than that, going to the extremes of beating animals just because they felt like it. Also disturbing was the immense amount of swearing from the workers. Being in college and in the Greek system specifically, I hear a lot of swearing and derogatory language. I don't usually swear, but it doesn't necessarily bother me. Hearing the dialogue that the workers had with themselves and the animals bothered me, a lot.

In addition to the swearing, there was quite a lot of cheering done by the workers. Not cheering in the sense that someone was winning a race, receiving an award, or achieving a goal but rather the cheering that occurs when a frat guy's friends find out that he got lucky with a girl last night. It was the most unnerving cheering. The workers were whooping and yelling because what they were doing to the animals excited them - how slaughtering animals could be thrilling I cannot fathom.

Ubiquitous throughout all of the sources I have been presented so far in this class is the main driving factor behind animal cruelty - money. "The values of wild animals have been reduced to their economic value" according to Earthlings. A century ago, animals were not factory farmed - they were family farmed. The many steps that led to the efficiently carried out mass murder in factory farms today was completely driven by the greed.

What is the difference between the murder of a human and the murder of an animal? As I have just described, what is being done to animals has three out of four of the same primary motives as serial killers - anger (beating the animals and swearing unnecessarily), thrill (cheering and getting excited), and financial gain (sought out by the industry as a whole).

For many, the life of a human has a much higher value than the life of an animals - however, that does not mean that the life of an animal has no value at all. As stated in Earthlings, "it takes nothing from a human to be kind to an animal". What occurs in factory farms, and in many other situations as described in the segments of companionship, clothing, entertainment, and science, shows humans at their worst - abusing their superiority and not accepting any responsibility for their actions. People do not have to treat animals the way they do. It is unnecessary and makes me ashamed. However, I am so happy that I am being exposed to this information, because -

"Ignorance is the first line of defense - but is breached by anyone that wants to know the truth".

Language

Today was the first day of Animal Planet. It was even better than I expected. In high school I took a class that was very seminar based that focused on lot of human rights issues. This class has the same sort of feel – except that it focuses on animal and human rights, and that all of the students want to be there. I struggled with my class in high school because only about fifty percent of the students had prepared for seminar each class and only half of them would actually participate. I can already tell that this class is going to be much different.

In class today we watched a short clip of a French philosopher talking about the word “animal”. He claims that simply using the word animal is offensive and violent. Lumping all non-human living things together is a crime. I had never thought about this before. It made me think of words that humans use to lump certain groups of people together - often insensitively. For example, when someone references an Asian person, they might say "that Chinese person" assuming that the person is Chinese. That person could easily be of a different Asian descent such as Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. By lumping groups together, you loose the sense of the individuality and the intimacy of knowing the identity of another person - or in this case, the animal.

Immediately I thought about the Bible and human's relationship with animals through scripture. I was brought up Catholic and believe that scripture is the true work of God. However as I have gotten older, I have begun to realize that scripture can be misinterpreted, taken to an extreme, or not followed at all.

Pertaining to animals specifically, scripture tells us that humans have complete domination over animals.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Genesis 1:28

Adam was also given the duty of naming all animals. The fact that all the animals have a name is significant. It means that they are individual species, not just “non-human”. By calling them “animals” it lumps them all together. Animals have names because they are different from each other. WE are technically animals, even though we may be religiously given power over non-human animals.

When God granted Adam the responsibility to name all the animals, it implies intimacy. Not only is the animal an individual, but there is an inherent closeness when naming something. It is often said that it is harder for a child to give away a pet when it has already given it a name. The dominion that Adam was granted was not a tyrannical dominion, but rather the dominion of a shepherd. I believe that God gave humans dominion over animals so that humans would care for them and respect His creation.

Whenever I have thought about or discussed vegetarianism in the past, I have always thought it was not for me because I am Catholic and God gave me the right to eat animals. I now realize how narrow and closed minded this thinking really is. In no part of the Bible did God grant humans the right to drag turkeys hung upside down by their legs through scalding baths completely conscious as Foer describes in his novel, Eating Animals. In no way does God condone the treatment of chickens when they are crammed by the tens of thousands into tiny shacks. And certainly I would hope God does not tolerate humans dismissing these acts as “okay because humans are superior”. Yes, animals may have been created so that we can use them for food. But they also enrich the earth, provide us with companions, and demonstrate God’s power and creativity. We can eat them, but they absolutely do not need to be tortured in the process. That does not reflect the intimacy that God bestowed upon the relationship between animals and humans.