A particular species of octopus lugs around coconut shells to hide in when threatened.At times it builds potential shelters by joining two shell halves.One biologist will call this "amazing".Another shall dub the octopus "a low life-form,relative to the snail".Now here,do we have all-too-common attitudes towards non-human life-patronising at best,contemptuous at worst?Images of a cephalopod peeping from shell hollows,however,convey three simple truths to me.That life is beautiful to every creature born without asking to be born.That the world into which it is born is hostile(absurdly so)And that survival is a very,very lonely work.(and I am not the conventional biologist,though my profession and personal life revolves around anthropocentric biology alright).
Most scientists wager that using tools to survive is 'special' to humans.I find this awkwardly unfair.Bottlenose dolphins use a fishing tool to make foraging easier.Of course,tool-users like crows and macaques can't think up brandy-snifters and desktop gadgets,let alone dirty bombs and gas chambers.Does that glorify anthropocentrism,as exemplified by Descartis the philosopher for whom animals were machines mimicking sentience.(I would love to be corrected by staunch Descartians here).That was centuries back and we have moved ahead since.Apparently.
Man shares more with non-humans much,much more that he admits:Emotions,Communication,Social organisation geared to prevalently peaceful coexistence,or even Altruism.Yet it seems modern biological research must 'confirm' what was obvious in the 17th.century when cat-burning was still a rabble-rousing sport.Pointing to animal-intelligence,that is when Jean de la Fontaine,the great classical writer,took apart the clockwork animal of Cartesian pseudo-science,piece by rusty piece.
Many scientists advocate a radical rethink on the man-accorded status of non-human life forms,given their cognitive abilities.If nobody is listening to their call,I have got to give unwilling credit to Richard Ryder,the psychologist,who coined the tell-all term 'SPECIESISM'.Speciesists argue that humankind's 'in-born superiority' justifies everything that represents Exploitation in the animal kingdom.Unapologetic Speciesists declare that non-human pain is of moral irrelevance;The apologetic ones profess that humankind's special traits warrants special treatment.
Yesterday I was reading an lecture-article by Roger Scruton,a well-known philosopher who,independent of Speciesism,seems to fete man's 'inherent mastership'-an opinion which,seemingly unintentional,combines a bit of both the points of views of the speciesists-the apologetic and the unapologetic ones.Surely,as a philosopher,Professor Scruton must learn to know that on the cosmic scale,it is absolutely irrelevant whether man or mastodon anoints himself as the terrestrial king on our planet which is just an insignificant point(to the definition)in the universe-at least the one of whose dimensions man's knowledge covers at the moment.
Other speciesists,apparently out of divine inspiration,say that 'beasts' lack harvestable souls.So their suffering is a theological non-event.I find this concept outrageous.Evidently it must be a political non-event too,with the 'beasts' lacking harvestable votes.Popularly elected leaders ignore non-human interests except when the magic of democratic majority decides otherwise!
If we look back at history of the evolution of humankind's knowledge,it is clear that from Pythagoras in antiquity onwards,Speciesism has been persistently knocked down.Locke and Schopenhauer felt that brutality towards served to cater to pervert human nature.Rousseau saw sentience as a universal bond.Bentham identified Pain as a proof of man-animal kinship:"The question is not,can they Reason,nor can they Talk,but can they Suffer?"..Yes,and horribly so,said Steven Wise,a legal scholar of the 20th.century,while elaborating upon the factual story of disease-injected chimpanzees.Being an animal lover myself,apart from being a proud member of the human species who loves life as well,I am outraged enough to declare that purported inter-species 'differences' to privilege Man stand no scrutiny at all,moral or scientific.
The reader might,at this point,be irritated by my audacious opinions and my seemingly over-hyped all-pervading love for all life forms-in short,life.Here without trying to defend my myself,I would like to draw his attention towards a hypocrisy that seems to have been well accepted by all.If non-human species,as specially asserted by the speciesist school,are outside the ambit of morality,why do we keep their forced sacrifice out of polite society's sight?Is it because,by a subconscious instinct,all of us answer privately to our own selves what Jainism preaches,"there is no virtue of spirit greater than humble reverence for life"?
In Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner',the classic piece of verse which puts an artistic,figurative statement on moral chaos,a sailor of a ghost-ship undergoes expiation for shedding blood.He is ultimately redeemed by a liberating vision of the world's spiritual unity.And gazing in awe rather than conventional revulsion,he is deeply moved to exclaim,
"O Happy living things!no tongue,
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware.."
In Robert Brasson's movie-classic 'Au Hasard Balthazar' which is one of the greatest odes to transcendence,Balthazar,a donkey,the beast of burden,after enduring myriad forms of human persecution and cruelty throughout its life,ends up bullet-hit on a vast field.And the aged animal slowly dies,free at last,yet an unwitting shepherd to the sheep that graze by.
Few artistic works as mentioned above, have conveyed with more conviction the gratuitous nature of human aggression which is based on an sad assumption of brutal mastery.The world's interconnectedness flows from Empathy,across borders,across species,and across time-as even derided creatures falling by the wayside may teach us by their silent self-sacrifice.That has been the saga since times eternal,of Nature's most wonderful gift to all of us to love unconditionally.Life.
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