Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Animal Rights Focus Promotes Romanticism
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- Grounding Animal Rights in Human Similarity Counterproductive
Animal Rights Focus Promotes RomanticismTHE CHARACTERIZATION OF HUMANS AS ENVIRONMENTAL DESTROYING MACHINES ESTABLISHES A RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE BASED ON REPRESSION—THIS PREVENTS A POSSIBILITY OF AN ETHICAL RELATIONSHIP Heller ‘93 [Chaia, “For the Love of Nature: Ecology and the Cult of the Romantic,” Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, pp. 227-8] The Environmental Defense Fund had a recent television campaign showing the "whole earth" photograph suddenly and audibly crumpled by two white man's hands. A stern voice stated dryly, "If you don't recycle, you're throwing it all away." In both instances, the message is clear: If individuals do not constrain their desire to "trash" nature, the natural world is done for.
However, the environmental call for individual constraint implies a pessimistic view of society's potential relationship with nature. It suggests that our relationship with the natural world is inherently predicated on a repression of a desire to destroy nature rather than on a desire to enhance nature. "Love as constraint" portrays love only as a holding back, a repression of a destructive desire, rather than as a release of human desire to participate creatively in the natural world. Loving nature through constraint keeps us from identifying and demanding our distinctively human potential to love nature through creativity and cooperation within society. Thus, we fail to see that we can actually release our desire to create a just society where there would be neither "helpless ladies" nor a "helpless Mother Nature" to protect. Focusing on self-restraint obscures the potential for self-expression that we need to create a society free of all social and ecological degradation. "Love-as-constraint" suggests that we are inherently destructive to each other within society and toward nature. "Love as an enhancement of freedom" means we can actually enrich the development of other humans as well as nature. This leads to the second point. "Romantic constraint" masks the face of the true destroyer of nature and social justice. Its warped logic runs in this way: If true love is demonstrated through constraint of the desire to defile, then a defiled nature results from the refusal of the lover to.constrain her/himself. Thus, in the case of environmental degradation, nature's destruction results from the refusal of individuals to restrain themselves. In this way, each individual is chastised and shamed for betraying nature.
However, greed is a far less romantic cause for ecocide than is unrestrained "desire." It is much more seductive to wear a button that says, "Love Your Mother" than it is to carry a banner saying, "End Domination and Greed Within Society!" We must uncover the perpetrators of this greedy war against oppressed humanity and nature. We must renounce our vows of "constraint" toward nature while releasing our desire for both a free nature and a free society. Grounding Animal Rights in Human Similarity CounterproductiveTHE COMPARISON OF ANIMALS AND HUMANS THROUGH RIGHTS TALK ENGAGES IN A POLITICAL ECONOMY THAT CAN ONLY RESULT IN RE-HIERARCHIZATION—ON Taimie L. Bryant, professor of law, UCLA School of Law, 2007 [“Similarity or Difference as a Basis for Justice: Must Animals be like Humans to be Legally Protected from Humans,” Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 70] The similarity argument, in the context of advocacy for animals, claims that animals are like humans in the capacities that are relevant to legal entitlements and, therefore, that a just society would provide species-appropriate legal entitlements that mirror the entitlements society gives humans. A fundamental problem with this argument is that it is not possible to resolve completely the question whether some or all animals are sufficiently like humans that justice requires treating the two groups alike, even if there were agreement about which capacities are relevant for comparison. (10) Information about animals' capacities, independent of comparisons to human capacities, is useful information about animals and may change public attitudes about animals. Nevertheless, if the basis of the claim for increased protection is that like entities (humans and animals) should be treated alike (both should have entitlements to protect themselves), information about animals simply as animals (and not as compared to humans) is not useful for the purpose of giving animals increased protection and reducing the rights of humans to (ab)use them. If animals do not have characteristics considered essential to humans in the ways that those characteristics exist in humans, it is possible to dismiss claims of similarity raised for purposes of curtailing humans' use of animals. Even if one is seeking only better treatment for animals and not legal rights, the argument of similarity to humans is weakened by counterarguments that animals are not similar enough to create an obligation in humans to treat them better. For example, animals may feel pain but cognitively process it differently or manage it more effectively. (11) Animals may think, but not in the ways that humans do. If an animal lacks self-consciousness or the cognitive ability to anticipate his life in the future, the loss of his life may be deemed less meaningful than the loss of a human's life because humans do have self-consciousness and can project themselves into the future. (12) Moreover, new information that appears to prove similarity between humans and animals may only result in a redefinition of the term "human" so that the oppositional categories of "human" and "animal" remain intact. Just as the finding that chimpanzees make tools meant that humans would no longer be defined by reference to toolmaking, newfound similarities between animals and humans may result only in new or refined definitions of humans, in order to retain the singularity of humans. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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