‘Human Souls, Animal Lives’
David Glidden, in his essay (Opinion, Nov. 16), “Human Souls, Animal Lives: Who or What Needs Saving?” concludes that if we must be concerned about treating the other life forms on this planet with some respect, before we do away with animal vivisection for medical research, we should do away with McDonald’s, fur coats, and leather shoes, belts and handbags.
Glidden admits that his priorities are not metaphysically grounded, but rather represent an appeal to “reason” and “toleration.” But, surely, more people benefit more often from eating Big Macs than from any conceivable product of medical research on animals. (Now, if Glidden wants to include cosmetics research on animals it might be a closer call.) The Utilitarians--Jeremy Bentham and his crowd (if there are any left)--not to mention the fast-food industry and the American Beef Council, have a pretty strong argument, metaphysically speaking, for putting hamburgers and hot dogs well ahead of research on maladies, which, after all, afflict a relatively small minority of the 5 billion people who presently inhabit the planet.
It’s a tough problem, and Glidden allows as we will probably have to wait a hundred years or so until there are enough physical facts available to suggest an answer (if the gorillas and whales hold out).
Yes, it’s a tough problem, made a lot tougher by asking the wrong questions to begin with. Do animals have souls and minds? Do we have souls and minds? If so, do they feel pain the way we do? If not, do we feel pain the way they do? And in any case, so what?
Anyone who works with animals knows they feel pain, that it impairs their ability to function, even their ability to survive. When a horse goes lame it’s feeling pain; when a lab technician drills a hole in a monkey’s skull it feels pain. So, presumably, would any of us. The difference is that we can express our pain in value-loaded symbols that that transmit an unmistakable message: “This pain is something I don’t deserve and you ought to do something to help alleviate it.” Thus we make our pain “real” to other humans. The other animals can’t do that.
But there is, I think, a more profound difference. We are probably the only life form on this planet capable of conceiving of itself as separate from nature, and, therefore, entitled to “exploit” nature, and to enjoy a large degree of immunity from some of her harsher strictures.
That is not to say that we really are separate from, and superior to, nature, but only that we think we are. Little wonder. The priests and rabbis keep telling us we are. We are clearly the nonpareil tool makers and tool users of the biosphere. When in the natural history of the planet has one life form so totally dominated all the others? There’s only that one flaw: we are completely incapable of foreseeing the consequences of our acts. Including the consequences of thinking of ourselves as separate from nature.
Among those consequences (seen with perfect hindsight) is that arrogance, born of ignorance, fear and superstition, that lets us imagine we are fundamentally superior to, and of greater worth than, the life around us.
It is that arrogance, coupled with absolute lack of foresight, that lets us act as if 5 billion people are still not enough, that we should all be able to live to 100, that agriculture is more important than rain forests and timber cutting is more important than wilderness; and that we may torture animals in the name of science unless they can be shown to possess a soul like ours.
ROLF P. COLT
El Cajon
