Speciesism

To combat the “aggressive wasteful and planet endangering consumption” (Bennett 2010 pp.51) of our current epoch, we can again take notes from Crow. She sits and waits; she watches and charts. Our cawtographer at work. She is a wild creature, yet she acts slowly. She remembers where food is, if a certain site holds the potential for nourishment she will scope, and then inspect first-wing, slowly increasing her visits. As a wild ‘beast’ nothing is taken for granted, trepidation is the calling card of crow, she must mistrust, suspicion in her oily-slick eyes. If we are to set this in contrast to the ways in which we humans set about eating, the break-neck pace in which food is made for us and laid on supermarket shelves, the difference is staggering.

As a 19th century naturalist, transcendentalist philosopher, Henry Thoreau was an anomaly. Thoreau spoke of his “practical objection” to meats which seep and leak –

(Like our numerous landfills)

- and moreover, believed that “every man who has been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic facilities in the best position has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food.” (Thoreau 1993 pp.144) Without a doubt this concept of the abstaining from animal flesh to preserve one’s poetic facilities is dated; however, he brings to our discussion an important point about the ‘othering’ of the meat industry.

Thoreau wrote that, regarding the blood and guts of animal meals that is “most days prepared for them by others (…) most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands” (Thoreau 1993 pp.144). Here, Jane Bennett notes that the ‘others’ Thoreau speaks of are women, however I wish to broaden this scope to include modern day slaughterhouse workers in this category; a group of people who, on the whole, only have one vocational option separating them from poverty[1] and in regard to the first hand nature of the two actions, having a hand in and handling, they could be construed as within the same category.

Therefore, we have others whom we are satisfied to kill, others from who we expect the killing to be done, and others with who the mess and pain will be handled by; this deep separation runs further than species, it runs through race, class and gender, it is deeply discriminatory and one of the hallmarks of our current epoch of cruelty and ambivalence, so how can we be reconciled to this fact? Speciesism is so deeply rooted, roosted, within our culture that we allow ourselves to be blind to these others, blind to their distress and unhearing of their cries.

 

Crow feasts on the dead, carrion, but crow does not do the deed, carrion, human does the deed and thus human must become ungrounded from this view, carrion, for we cannot continue to carrion.

 

Within Alfred Whitehead’s view of the natural, the doubling up of life and reality into a view of perception and a ‘real world’ of science beyond perception implies that for the average person “the reality of the external world is never known but only conjectured, while the reality of appearances is known but remains purely mental or dreamlike.” (McHenry 2015 pp.19) Therefore it is no wonder we find ourselves dividing up what is concrete in our immediate perception and what is out of reach and dealt with by others, but this view can no longer be upheld. Our Cawtographer witnesses from above and comes down to land, in seeing these two worlds as one; they insist we cannot carrion.

 

 

 

 

[1] Desperation and abhorrent working conditions amongst these humans lead to the development of PTSD among various other mental health issues, drug and alcohol abuse and higher cases of domestic violence.