Skywritings

For 37 years now, the town of Ste-Perpétue has been conducting what has become one of Quebec’s biggest summer festivals. But although it is portrayed and perceived as harmless family fun and entertainment, the organizers, participants and spectators have in reality been celebrating 3 consecutive days of cruel animal abuse.

“This Festival,” writes Jean-Jacques Kona-Boun, DMV, “fails to respect the 5 fundamental rights of animals and goes against the recognition of the fact that animals feel, as recognized recently by the Ordre des Médecins Vétérinaires du Québec” [translation: original texts in French].

The treatment of the animals at this festival has just been condemned by the SPCA of Montreal.

Pigs, piglets, hogs, sows and boars are forced to endure terror and torment. Frightened animals are penned in, chased, jumped on, pulled, pushed, battered and bruised by humans without a thought for their panic or pain.

Videos from past Festivals show terrified, desperately squealing creatures being dragged and dropped into containers with no concern for trauma or injury, forcibly held down in watery mud where they cannot breath, attacked from behind and pounced on from heights by people twice their size, some of the humans wearing helmets to protect themselves, with no thought of protection or mercy for their victims. 

Images: 1 2 3 4 5 Videos: A B

These innocent animals have no idea why they are suddenly being pursued and terrorized and brutalized by screaming crowds of violent human beings.

Celebrating dominance over helpless animals can only traumatize the more sensitive children and encourage abusive behaviors in the more aggressive children, which can in turn lead to violence and criminality in adult life. Research in psychology and criminology has repeatedly found that people who commit acts of cruelty against animals are likely to hurt their fellow humans too.*

*Ascione FR & Arkow P (Eds) (1999) Child abuse, domestic violence, and animal abuse: Linking the circles of compassion for prevention and intervention Purdue U Press

This wanton brutality only brings shame upon Quebec, along with untold suffering for defenseless creatures – suffering of a kind that we would never dream of allowing to be inflicted on our pets, nor on any human being.

The Quebec Manifesto, already signed by more than 46,000 Québécois, call for according animals the legal status of sentient beings instead of property, as now, in order to prevent animal abuses and suffering.

A petition calling on artists not to lend their names or their art to this Festival already has over 1,500 signatures and another petition asking the mayor of Sainte-Perpétue to stop supporting this animal abuse already has more than 18,000 signatures.

Media, presenters and sponsors of this event are asked to transform it into nonviolent, nonabusive family entertainment, inspiring kindness and compassion in our future generations.

Until and unless the Ste Perpétue Festival is reformed to eliminate all animal abuse, all media and the general public are asked to heed the call of Georges Laraque to boycott this event.

A mendacious monument

glorifying Magyar self-pity

and concealing Hungarian complicity

but in the long run and the wide world

it will have the opposite effect…

Koubeissi, M. Z., Bartolomei, F., Beltagy, A., & Picard, F. (2014). Electrical stimulation of a small brain area reversibly disrupts consciousness. Epilepsy & Behavior, 37, 32-35.

This center cuts off awakeness, not (just) consciousness. Inactivating the claustrum seems to put the subject into an immobile trance that is not sleep (which is an active dynamical state) but a kind of “suspended animation.”

But consciousness means feeling — feeling anything at all. It is not (just) awakeness.

If something could “cut off” feeling while leaving “doing” intact (moving, talking, etc.), then it would make us into the Zombies that we would have been if we were not conscious. (Now that would be a real “on-off” switch!)

But there is no such center, or switch. Because consciousness is much more fundamental and pervasive than mere awakeness.

And for some reason that no one can understand or explain, there (probably) cannot be Zombies — at least not with human-scale (or probably even any biological-scale) doing-capacity. To be able to explain how and why that is the case would require solving the mind/body problem (the “hard” problem).

By the way, like claustrum inhibition, general anaesthesia too cuts of awakeness but it also induces a lot of other accompanying changes in state along with it. (Maybe, if it is not harmful, claustrum inhibition could be used for surgery instead of pharmacologically inducing sleep or coma?)

And local anaesthesia merely cuts off sensation (which also happens to be felt): It makes the stimulation of the anesthesized location unfelt (but of course it leaves all other feeling intact).

As was brilliantly done recently to free a dog locked in a car in the heat by mobilizing a large number of people in the area via a cellular and Facebook, a global network of animal-lovers should be set up to alert people in any area immediately of any abuse witnessed: mistreatment, abandonment, dog-fights, etc.

Comme on vient de faire de façon géniale pour libérer un chien qui était découvert vérrouillé dans une voiture durant la chaleur –qu’on à sauvé par une mobilisation d’un grand nombre de personnes à travers Facebook — les amis des animaux devraient créer des réseaux globaux Facebook pour avertir par cellulaire instantanément tous ceux qui sont près lorsqu’on voit un abus, quoi que ça soit: abandon, maltraitement, combat de chien pitbull etc.

The Internet, instead of helping to democratize and integrate has furnished extremist sects with an unprecedentedly powerful weapon for recruitment, segregation and destruction.

“animals that provide us with healthy, life-giving food deserve not to be subject to torment and agony and immeasurable misery”
        — Daniel Payne, “Why You Should Eat ‘Humane’ Meat,” The Federalist, June 24 2014

Agreed.

So too do animals who do not provide us with healthy, life-giving food deserve not to be subject to torment and agony and immeasurable misery.

No living, feeling creature deserves to be subject to torment and agony and immeasurable misery — perhaps not even those who have subjected others to torment and agony and immeasurable misery.

But neither does any animal deserve to have its life taken to feed humans if it is not necessary for the survival and health of humans.

And it isn’t.

Nor is it possible to deprive a living, feeling creature of its life humanely, any more than it is possible to rape someone humanely.

Euthanasia is a way to end a life of torment and agony and immeasurable misery humanely.

But the needless slaughter of healthy, helpless animals is not euthanasia — nor should it be called humane.

At best some slaughter can be called “less-inhumane” than slaughter that causes torment and agony and immeasurable misery — just as rape without strangulation can be called “less-inhumane” than rape with strangulation.

But unnecessary life-taking is not and cannot be humane.

Craig, W. J., & Mangels, A. R. (2009). Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 109(7), 1266-1282.

Eisnitz, G. A. (2009). Slaughterhouse: The shocking story of greed, neglect, and inhumane treatment inside the US meat industry. Prometheus Books.

Rollin, B. E. (2009). Ethics and euthanasia. The Canadian Veterinary Journal, 50(10), 1081.

[Note: The following comments are based solely on the two 3-minute video segments linked below. Professor Chomsky has since replied that he has written a lot more on the subject of animal rights; that he does consider that animals have rights (though not the same ones as humans), and that he has supported animal rights movements for years. He considers species-destruction to be the most severe attack on animal rights by far, and one in which we are all complicit in our daily habits and decisions (travel, heating, etc.); it is accordingly one of his highest priorities. Professor Chomsky also points out that some animals are afforded some legal protection (e.g. in animal experimentation). But the animal slaughter that concerns Professor Chomsky most appears to be natural environment destruction rather than the suffering and slaughter of animals bred for that purpose. Though not a vegan, Professor Chomsky is opposed to factory farming.]

Noam Chomsky is a scholar and an ethical thinker for whom I (and countless others) have boundless admiration and respect. He is in many respects the moral conscience of our planet and our age.

Although Professor Chomsky has sympathy for the cause of animal suffering, it is not his highest priority (and he stresses that we are constantly having to make decisions about moral priorities throughout our lives).

Perhaps because he assigns them a lower priority or urgency, however, some of the details of Professor Chomsky’s views on the animal question do not seem to have undergone as deep and rigorous an analysis as his views on the ethical questions to which he assigns a higher priority:

“Rights” & Responsibilities. Professor Chomsky states (as have others), that in order to have certain “rights,” an individual must also have responsibilities — and animals do not have responsibilities.

It is certainly true that animals do not (and cannot) have responsibilities. Not even a trained seeing-eye dog can be literally said to have responsibilities.

It is not clear, however, whether what we mean by having “rights” — either in law or in ordinary language — necessarily entails anything about having (or being capable of having) responsibilities (although in practice the two are often linked).

Professor Chomsky himself gives an example: human infants. (Professor Chomsky admits — without further comment — that according rights to human infants even though they have no responsibilities is “speciesist.” The same point could be made about the rights of the severely handicapped.)

Harming Animals. But this semiological concern need not deter us. It is not substantive. We can refrain from using the word “rights” at all here, and speak only of the responsibilities (obligations) of humans:

We can agree to make it illegal for a human to harm another sentient (feeling) being intentionally except if it is necessary for the survival or health of a human.

(This would be much the same as making it illegal to kill someone, exculpable only if it was necessary for defence.) For animals, this would not yet be ideal, but it would be a night-to-day improvement over their lot today.

This also covers the (trivial) case of insects (which many others, too, have invoked as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the notion of animal rights): It’s alright to kill mosquitos or flies to protect people from bites or health hazards. Yet harming even insects wantonly or for pleasure can and should be unlawful too, and there is nothing absurd or ridiculous about that.

“Personhood”. Professor Chomsky does not discuss this topic in these 2 videos, but similar semiological points have been raised about attempts to accord animals the status of “persons” under the law. Yes, describing animals as persons is at odds with what we mean by “person” in ordinary language. But the law often uses words differently; for example, a corporation is a “person” (with rights and responsibilities) under the law.

Again, however, nothing substantive is at issue. Animals would gain the same legal protection if we agreed to make it illegal for a human to harm another sentient (feeling) being intentionally except if it is necessary for the survival or health of a human. Both “rights” and “personhood” can be left unmentioned if it causes confusion or opposition.

Decisions. As to personal choices: A lion has no choice about being a carnivore. It cannot survive or be healthy without eating other sentient (feeling) beings. Human beings (being omnivores) can. And they can choose not to eat animals, just as they have chosen not to murder, rape, have slaves, or subjugate women — and have accordingly outlawed it.

In most of the US and Europe today, it is feasible and easy to be a vegan, and not consume animal products. (The “opportunity costs” are small, and vanish once one has been doing it for a while.) Choosing not to eat meat at all is not like choosing to renounce all automated transport in order not to add to one’s carbon footprint.

Priorities. Last point: Although individuals can indeed decide their own moral priorities, it is nevertheless a fact that humans are now protected by law from being harmed by humans, but animals are not; only some special kinds of harm to animals under special conditions (such as laboratory experimentation) have some restrictions on them (minimal ones, minimally monitored or enforced).

The number of animals killed by humans every year exceeds the total number of humans killed by humans in all wars since the beginning of humanity. To my mind, that makes the protection of animals the most pressing moral priority of all.

J’ai le principe de ne pas remercier les véganes ni pour être végane ni pour faire tout ce qu’ils font à l’aide des animaux — et je ne souhaite pas de remerciements moi non plus. C’est un peu par superstition. Mon raisonement est que le seul espoir pour les animaux c’est que la majorité de l’humanité soit de nature disposé à devenir végane, exactement comme nous. Que ça soit normal. Donc il ne faut pas que nous nous traitions d’exceptionnels, pour le fait d’être déjà rendu là. On ne veut pas renforcer l’impression que le véganisme est destiné à toujours rester minoritaire.

Pourtant, il faut que je fasse hommage à la créativité, et aux infatigables exertions, dévoument et zèle de Marie-Claude et de Marion sans lesquelles cet événement remarquable n’aurait jamais vu son jour. Moi, j’ai beaucoup jacassé en tant que « porte-parole officiel » (ainsi délégué par M-C & M), mais les vraies héroïnes — je ne dirai pas anges, pour insister qu’elles sont en effet humaines, comme nous tous — ce sont Marion et Marie-Claude.

Ainsi, aux noms des 150+milliards p/a sans nom, sans voix, sans havre, permettez moi de vous transmettre: « morituri vos salutamus » pour avoir été à l’avant garde du sauvetage, sinon de nous-mêmes, alors de nos descendants.

Merci M & M-C

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J’avais mes doutes pour l’exhibition des animaux morts avant la marche, mais j’ai fini par être très, très ému en les voyant. Et le discours de Christelle/Emme était très émouvant aussi. Je ne suis plus à l’aise en me balladant dans les rues avec les restos en plein air, sachant à quel horrible prix sont achetés ces plaisirs du palais. C’était si réconfortant d’être entouré de 13h à 15h d’un autre monde qui n’avaient aucune complicité dans ces horreurs. Le seul espoir pour les animaux, c’est que nous ne sommes aucunement différents de la majorité des humains, sauf que nous avons vu, nous avons compris, et nous avons fait ce que tout le monde ferait. On n’a qu’à leur ouvrir les yeux, et ainsi leurs coeurs.

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Ne prenez pas au sérieux le témoignage des quantités de gens qui disent « J’peux pas supporter les véganes parce qu’ils se sentent supérieurs aux autres ! » C’est des gens qui commencent à se sentir mal à l’aise, et c’est leur propre végane interne — c’est à dire leur conscience — qui parle… Faut les encourager, en disant : « Pas du tout, nous sommes exactement comme vous ! »

Et surtout, faut pas passer le temps à se disputer avec les gens qui disent « je m’en fous des animaux » . Faut passer à la parole avec d’autres qui ont des coeurs susceptibles à l’ouverture. Il y au moins 150 milliards de victimes innocentes et sans défense chaque année qui dépendent de nous et qui ne seront point protégées par des disputes inutiles avec les sans-coeurs. Nous devons compter sur le fait que la vaste majorité de l’humanité ne consiste pas des psychopathes mais des potentiels véganes.

Brigitte Bourgie m’a posé les questions habituelles, que nous connaissons tous, concernant les abattoirs:

« En tant que scientifique, avez vous des preuves que les cruautés documentées dans les abattoirs sur Youtube ne sont pas des exceptions? Il existe des normes et des reglements humanitaires pour les abattoirs, et les inspecteurs sont là pour assurer qu’ils soient respectés. En plus, les entreprises inistent que c’est à l’avantage de leur production de bien traiter leurs animaux… »

J’avais trop peu de temps pour répondre de façon cohérente. Mais si j’avais eu le temps, ma réplique aurait étée que les preuves sur Youtube sont issues des échantillions aléatoires et clandestins qui ne rencontrent que des horreurs qui sont normalement cachées des yeux du grand public. Les « normes et les reglements » sont loins d’être rigoureux, contrôllés ou respectés. Il faudrait au minimum les renforcer puissament et fiablement avec des lois, de la surveillance èlectronique (disponible au grand public), et des punitions sévères.

Mais même à la limite d’optempération, l’abattage humanitaire est impossible, étant auto-contradictoire, exactement comme le viol humanitaire est impossible et auto-contradictoire — c’est honteux même de le proposer.

Peu importe la rigeur des « normes et des reglements » , on ne peut pas « de façon humanitaire » élever les êtres sensibles en captivité et ensuite les abattre contre leur volonté, pour faire plaisir à nos palais (sous le faux prétexte que c’est nécessaire à notre survie et à notre santé). Le viol, même si les victimes ne sont pas étranglées après, est une aggression et une violence abominable.

Ce n’est pas l’euthanasie qu’on pratique aux abattoirs, pour libérer un être souffrant d’une maladie incurable et insupportable. C’est une violence exactement comme le viol. Cette violance ne se fait pas par nécessité de survie et de santé, comme prétendu, mais pour le plaisir du violeur — le violeur étant, dans le cas de l’abattage, autant le consommateur que l’abatteur (un sal métier, qui attire et cultive les sadiques).

“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.” Craig & Mangels (2009)

Craig, W. J., & Mangels, A. R. (2009). Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 109(7), 1266-1282.

Eisnitz, G. A. (2009). Slaughterhouse: The shocking story of greed, neglect, and inhumane treatment inside the US meat industry. Prometheus Books.

Low, P., Edelman, D., & Koch, C. (2012). The Cambridge declaration on consciousness.

Rollin, B. E. (2009). Ethics and euthanasia. The Canadian Veterinary Journal, 50(10), 1081.

Rowan, A. N. (1999). Cruelty and abuse to animals: A typology. Child abuse, domestic violence, and animal abuse: Linking the circles of compassion for prevention and intervention, ed. FR Ascione & P. Arkow, 328-34.

When I teach cognitive science and we discuss the Turing Test, I point out that the Turing Test is not a trick or a game. It is a scientific research programme (reverse-engineering) for explaining how the mind works, by designing a system that can do everything that a real person with a mind can do – so much so that it is indistinguishable (for a lifetime) from a real person with a mind to a real person with a mind.

But to bring it home to the students what it really means to pass the Turing Test, I pick out someone in the class, midway through the course, when we all know one another, and ask everyone to imagine that I now reveal to them that this person is in fact a robot who was created in MIT 4 years ago. My question is: would they now feel that it was all right to kick that person? Almost everyone always says no, it would not. And then I ask them why not? And they say that they have no way of knowing that it would not hurt that person, even if they were a robot. I then point out to them that they have no way of knowing with one another either, and that that’s the whole point of Turing indistinguishability.

And then I ask them: would they kick their dogs? And if not, why is it all right to do incomparably worse to countless calves, cows, pigs, chickens – and, yes, dogs and cats – every minute of every day in order to keep enjoying our carnivore pleasures rather than just satisfying our herbivore needs?

Scholars and scientists are becoming increasingly involved in this question for both ethical and pragmatic reasons. Since the epochal book of Peter Singer in 1975, not only philosophers but social scientists, biologists, environmental scientists and food scientists have generated a sizeable empirical and theoretical literature on all aspects of human/animal relations, culminating in the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness by a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge in 2012:

We declare the following: The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective [feeling] states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds , and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

In other words, animals feel. To give an idea of what is at issue, I would like to try to reduce the problem of the human treatment of non-human animals to a few basics that most of us can agree about. The first and most important one is that humans are animals too. The second is that all animals with nervous systems feel. They are not insensate lumps of matter. The third is that ethics and law – what is right and wrong to do – are predicated on the existence of feeling: In an insensate world there would still be natural laws (laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism) but no such thing as morality, or laws of conduct, or right or wrong, because if nothing feels, nothing matters.

Now, although there is no suffering that we inflict on non-human animals that we do not inflict on humans, the vast difference is that the suffering we inflict on humans is seen as wrong by most decent people worldwide — and it is also against the law. Not so for animals. They are not protected by the law and most of us are not only unaware of their agony in slaughterhouses but we are actively sustaining it as consumers. Most of us believe (1) that meat is obtained humanely, and (2) that it is necessary for our survival and health. Both of these beliefs are profoundly, tragically and demonstrably wrong. Reducing and eventually abolishing the gratuitous suffering that humans are inflicting on animals is hence one of the most urgent moral imperatives of our age.

But even normal human beings have needs – indeed so do non-human animals. For example, they have to eat. And in nature, eating always entails a conflict of interest between predator and prey. Carnivores eat other animals, even though their prey feel and suffer, because otherwise the carnivores suffer. They cannot survive otherwise. So there is the familiar Darwinian struggle for survival between predators and prey.

Herbivores have to eat too, and they too are predators, but their prey – plants — though they are likewise living organisms, are not feeling organisms. They do not have nervous systems. They are living matter, but insensate matter. So the survival needs of carnivores necessarily entail that they cause suffering to other feeling creatures, whereas the survival needs of herbivores do not.

What about our own species? We are omnivores, capable of thriving healthily on either a carnivorous or a purely herbivorous diet. Our ancestors no doubt ate meat, because they had to: there was not enough herbivorous fare for survival. But then we invented agriculture, and it became possible, in principle, to thrive, healthily, on purely herbivorous fare. However, we have not yet taken that route, and the question is why?

The worldwide March Against Slaughterhouses on June 14 2014 is intended to open the eyes and hearts of decent people worldwide, to the enormity of the agony of innocent, helpless creatures in slaughterhouses, to the fact that their suffering is unnecessary, and, to the great urgency of adopting laws to protect them.